


Feigning Valor

by Signel_chan



Series: Snowed In-verse [4]
Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates, Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fake Identities, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Friendship, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Politics, Secrets, Solving Family Mysteries, Strippers & Strip Clubs, Unexplained Disappearances
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2019-10-14 03:32:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 75,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17500742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Signel_chan/pseuds/Signel_chan
Summary: Kids who never should've gotten to know each other make for the best of friends once they get to properly meet (hey, meeting when one was a couple months old doesn't really count). But when one of them decides he needs to right a wrong that's happened to his family, something that requires going out of the country and crossing shakily-drawn allegiance lines--a decision has to be made. Is it worth possibly never making it back home to try and rescue someone who's been gone for ten years?





	1. How Things Have Changed

**Author's Note:**

> hi this was my NaNo 2k18 project, and it's also the far-future sequel to the other three fics in its series so no worries if you think this sounds interesting but can't be bothered reading any of those!
> 
> also, for plot reasons I can't tag this but lon'qu is the dad of our funnily-named child here, a fact you might not know if you haven't read the other fics.

The backpack on the bed had been half-emptied before it had ever been set down, something that had happened only because some of the clothes that had been inside it had already been slammed down onto the floor, visible dust coming off of them. Shaking her head at what mess she’d caused in her bedroom already, Kjelle told herself that she’d take care of that at a later point before going back to digging through the backpack, looking for something in particular she knew she’d brought home with her. More dirty clothes from being in close quarters with animals? Not exactly what she was looking for. Some of her childhood belongings that she’d snuck out with her? They were great, but they weren’t needed at the moment. What she wanted was something more important than anything she’d have been able to grab for herself, and she needed to know where it was.

When the door to the room was pushed open, she didn’t bother to turn to see who it was coming in to say hello, as she was elbow-deep in the backpack with no interest in giving up until she had what she was looking for. “I can’t believe my mother went and picked you up without telling me you were coming home today,” the voice of the person who’d come into the room said, closing the door behind her to give them some privacy in case there was anyone listening in. “She didn’t even tell me where she was going when she left, just that she would be back at some point. How stupid, am I right?”

“I guess that’s a little stupid, but I’m sure she had her reasons for why she didn’t want to tell you.” She still hadn’t looked to see who was there, but from the moment the door had opened Kjelle had known who was stopping in, so their identity wasn’t much of a surprise at all. “Like, maybe she wanted me to be able to get back for a few minutes before we were back to the same old stuff we’re always up to. That’d be nice. But it’s not what I’m getting, clearly, because you’re in here already, Severa.”

“Are you telling me that you don’t want me in here with you?” Gasping in faked surprise at what she’d just heard, Severa brought her hands together in front of her face, before giving a couple fake sobs. “I thought we were best friends, yet here you are, telling me you don’t want me coming in to see you after you get home from being gone for—”

“A week. I was gone for a week.” Cutting her off before she could give some ridiculous amount of time that was definitely far from the truth, Kjelle finally turned to look at Severa, standing there over top of the pile of dirty clothes in the middle of the room, her eyes wide and trying to produce tears as she looked like she was attempting to cry. “Which I’m sure you’d have known that if you ever paid attention to a word your mother said. I know poor Cordelia was trying to tell you for almost a month that I’d be gone for the week, so I could see my parents for a little bit before what we’re doing soon.”

“—I mean, I know that you were only gone for a week, jeez, what kind of person do you think I am?” Severa immediately dropped the act she’d been putting on, going from attempting to cry to being nonchalant about everything in an instant. “I’m just saying, it’s really rude that you don’t want me coming to say hi once you’re home. We live together, it only makes sense that I’d come see you.”

“Or it makes sense that you’d at least wait until I’m done unpacking to come see me, since we do live together. Not like I’m going anywhere else today.” Shrugging as she went back to focusing on digging through her bag, Kjelle didn’t care that she heard the distinct sound of Severa kicking at the clothes on the floor, nor did she mind hearing her friend’s sputtering as she tried to make some rebuttal. “It’s all good though, again I’m not going anywhere else so you being here isn’t much of a distraction.”

The sounds of shuffling on the floor stopped at once, as Severa decided it wasn’t worth making more of a fuss than she already had and instead chose to sit down on Kjelle’s bed, right beside where her bag was. “Obviously I’m not a distraction, you’re really going to town on finding something in there. What’s so important that you haven’t stopped looking for it the whole time? Normally you just throw everything from your bag on the floor and make dear Mother take care of it.”

“I only did that once, and that wasn’t how it actually happened. She offered to wash my clothes for me and I said that was cool, I didn’t make her do anything. And I am going to clean this room up once I find…what I’m…looking for!” Her fingers had gripped something in the bag that didn’t feel like the surrounding clothes, and as she pulled it out she recognized the pattern on the patch with a grin. “Here it is! Look at what _my_ mother gave me for coming to spend a week with her!”

Severa narrowed her eyes as she looked at what Kjelle was holding on to, finding nothing interesting about it. “Looks like something dumb. Mind telling me what it is?”

“It’s a patch to put on my bag, from the Feroxi police. Mom told me she told some of them that I’d be interested in having one and they made sure to get me one for while I was there.” She turned her hand so that she could see the front of the patch for herself, the dull red color reminding her of many days spent hanging around one of the small police stations up in the mountains, where they all had that insignia mounted on the wall. While she’d never been interested in the workings of the police, she’d grown up appreciating what they did and thankful that her family hadn’t ever needed to worry about calling them, due to their remote location as well as her parents’ affiliation with the force. “They don’t just hand these out to people, they’re usually already sewn onto uniforms before the officer gets theirs, and they’re next to impossible to get off without ripping.”

“Why do you care so much about a little piece of fabric you’ll lose in a day?” Severa asked, hearing Kjelle’s almost breathless _what?_ that she gave in response. “Come on, you know it’s true, you’re going to misplace that just as fast as you misplace everything else in here.”

Shaking her head, Kjelle explained how, exactly, that wasn’t going to be the case: “I won’t lose it, because I told my parents I’d get it sewn onto my backpack after getting home. I might not be asking your mother to clean my room this time, but I am asking her to put this in place for me.”

“Good, she deserves to have to do some kind of work around here after forgetting to tell me you were coming home today.” This was typical Severa, going right back to remembering her newest reason for having a grudge against her mother, but it was something that Kjelle didn’t mind about her friend. At least, it was something she’d grown to accept about her, and she didn’t allow it to bother her too much; that was just what happened after living with someone for the better part of four years, with very little time spent back at the camp that she’d grown up calling home.

It was kind of a strange situation that she’d found herself in, and she hated having to explain how she’d ended up in it to people who weren’t already aware, but the important piece of the story was that she had only chosen to move to her friend’s house in Ylisstol because she wanted to get a normal teenage experience. Living at a camp a fair drive outside of the nearest town meant that she’d never really had the chance to do extracurricular activities growing up, and all of her after school time was spent sitting at the police station waiting to be able to go home with whichever parent had been on shift that day. She knew she’d spent more of her time there at that station than she ever had at home, but the secluded life was the life her parents wanted to live, and she wasn’t meant to question it.

The opportunity to move in with Severa and her parents came after a visit to Ylisstol for the holidays, when they stayed at the house with their family and the girls, who’d spent time together several times a year ever since Severa was born, grew closer than they had been able to before. It wasn’t an idea that either of them had come up with, and it wasn’t one that anyone wanted to accept right away, but after an incident a few months later that changed their lives in the Feroxi mountains forever, Kjelle was ready to take that leap, leave her parents’ care, and start a life as a fairly normal teenager.

Closing her hand tightly around the patch for a moment, Kjelle sighed before setting it carefully on part of her bed and dumping the rest of her bag’s contents on the floor on top of everything already there. “I hope she’s not too busy to do it now, I’d rather not prove you right by losing it right away,” she said, picking the patch back up once she knew the bag was empty. “Come on, let’s go see what she’s doing, I wonder if she already knows that I’m going to ask her about this.”

“Why would she? That would require one of your parents telling one of mine what they gave you, and I doubt they did that.” Jumping off the bed and narrowly missing slipping on a rogue shirt from the pile, Severa still managed to get to the door and open it before Kjelle had the chance. “You know how your parents are, super separated from everything and all that. If they weren’t, don’t you think they’d live around here? Face it, they just don’t like talking with anyone else.”

“That’s not the case and you know it, Severa. They have their reasons for living so far away, and those reasons aren’t to ignore people they like. Half the time I was there they kept asking about how everyone here was doing, anyway.” That was the truth, as Kjelle knew she’d spent more time giving updates on everyone than she had talking about herself. “Besides, if they did hate talking with anyone, why would they have stayed here when they came for my graduation? Wouldn’t that, you know, make things worse?”

Swinging the door back and forth as she waited for her friend to leave the room, Severa didn’t hesitate on giving an answer. “I guess you’re right, they would’ve stayed somewhere by themselves if they really didn’t like anyone. Sucks that they only were here for, what, a day back then? I like your parents, they tell some great stories if you let them.”

“Oh trust me, I know all about the stories they tell.” Having had to hear a lot of those stories many times as they drove from place to place without any sort of music available to them, Kjelle didn’t really want to think much about them. She got to the doorway and had Severa nearly slam the door in her face, her younger friend giggling once she realized that she hadn’t ever had a chance to make that happen. Together they went down the hall to the main part of the house, hearing no one and seeing nothing but darkened rooms, an odd thing to encounter in the late afternoon there.

“If Mother left again without telling me, I’ll fight her,” Severa said, cracking her knuckles on one hand. “She’s not allowed to keep doing that, I’m supposed to know where she’s going so I can go with her. It’s the rules.”

As they entered the dining room to find it empty, but with plates set up on the table for an early dinner—six settings, unusual but not unexpected given how often they had company for meals—it became clear that the lack of people being present must have had something to do with the extra dishes. “You don’t think your mom decided she’s going to invite people over to interrogate me about anything I saw up in Ferox, do you?” Kjelle asked after taking in the full sight of the table, setting her backpack down on the edge of the table but not letting go of the patch still in her hand. “I mean, I wouldn’t put it past her, but…usually I get at least a warning that it’s going to happen.”

“Who knows with her, honestly. It would make just as much sense for her to do that and forget to tell you as it would for her and Daddy to have gone to dinner with friends and forgotten about us.” Her lower lip poking out in a forced pout, Severa did what any self-respecting teenager would do and grabbed one of the chairs and pulled it out, moving the one next to it as well before laying down across them. “Wake me up when they get home or whenever you decide you’re ordering pizza for us to share, I’m taking a nap right here.”

“Why am I not surprised you’re going to do that?” There wasn’t much else to do right there at the moment, unless sitting in a room with someone who wasn’t going to respond to anything as she faked sleeping was considered worth someone’s time. Kjelle definitely didn’t think she needed to do that, so she left her bag where she’d put it and went back to her bedroom, closing the door and making sure it was locked so her friend didn’t somehow manage to get inside once more. She set the patch down on top of her dresser, making sure it was out in the open, before turning her attention to the pile of dirty clothes in the middle of the floor.

With a sigh she bent down and began sorting everything she had, separating it by color as well as by dirtiness, not wanting to wash something caked in dirt with everything that wasn’t. Even though she loved the little chunks of time she spent up at the camp with her parents, being there was a nightmare in terms of cleanliness, and that was being said as someone who’d never even ridden on one of the horses the camp was known for. Somehow she’d always ended up covered in dirt and dust without getting anywhere close to the horses, and it was something she’d accepted even as a child. All it meant was a bit of extra laundry to do if she didn’t want her clothes to be permanently discolored from the messes.

It was while she was sorting the clothes she’d first thrown out of the bag after getting home that she stopped completely, one shirt in particular setting off warning bells in her head. Without knocking too much of the grass and dried mud off of it, she turned it around so that she was looking at its front side, reading over the faded text on it with quickly-widening eyes. “Well, looks like I ended up with something that isn’t mine,” she said, balling it up and throwing it into her clothes basket, not wanting to deal with it. “If someone ends up missing it, I’ll send it back, but I doubt they’ll notice that one little shirt’s come back with me.”

That was the only disruption from her task, and soon she was carrying the first load of laundry out into the hall, expecting to find the house just as empty as it had been when she’d gone back into her bedroom. The sound of loud laughter from the dining room made her drop the pile of clothes onto the floor once more, not even caring that she’d created more of a mess than there’d originally been as she ran down the hall and back to where she’d last left Severa. The laughter ended as she entered the room—not in a negative sense, but because the person who’d been laughing saw her and fell into a silence that not even a wave from her could break them from. “I guess they really were bringing company over to interrogate you,” Severa remarked, watching as the person who’d been laughing walked across the room and grabbed Kjelle in a big hug, picking her up off her feet as they carried her back towards the table. “What a surprise, we managed to figure something out for once.”

“They’d _never_ do that,” Kjelle said, partially out of breath from the excitement of being carried by someone she hadn’t been expecting to see. “Really, what kind of benefit would there be to that? You wouldn’t start playing twenty questions with me about what I did on my trip, would you, O’wain?”

“And waste the glorious time of day learning about places I’d rather not hear of? That would be pointless!” Setting her down now that they were at the table’s side, O’wain placed a hand on the top of Kjelle’s head, ruffling her hair a bit. “Now, if you were to tell me about your parents, I’d be fine with that, but Ferox itself? No thank you.”

This was a relatively common exchange between the two, something that they’d shared over and over again ever since they’d first really gotten to know each other. Kjelle knew the reasons for him wanting to distance himself from talking about the place she considered her home country, and it wasn’t any sort of secret so everyone else in the room knew as well. That never once stopped someone from making the joke that he was going to “interrogate” her when he saw her next, to the point that “interrogate” was the codeword she regularly used for O’wain coming over after any of her trips to see her parents. “Okay, well, I’d appreciate it if you weren’t messing up my hair,” she said, lifting his hand off of her so that he couldn’t continue what he was doing. “You’re just going to make me have to leave to fix that if you keep it up.”

“I’m sure there was something you were in the middle of doing that you abandoned when you heard I was here,” he replied, calling her out exactly as he intended to. The way she froze, only to quietly slink away back towards the hall, proved to him that he was right, and for the next couple minutes she could hear him laughing again about the fact that she had to go back to what she’d been doing. Upon her return, the scene had changed slightly and now everyone was sitting at the table, only two chairs open but the chair between Severa and O’wain being meant for her. He offered it to her with a wave of his hand, which was accompanied with a look from Severa that told her that he was up to something.

Either that, or that _they_ were up to something, and it was never a good thing when the two of them were working on the same thing. Figuring out which one of those was the case wasn’t going to be easy, but Kjelle was going to do it one way or another, and if she was lucky it would happen while sitting at dinner with her two best friends and their parents, all of whom were more or less family to her, no matter how awkward it was to think of them in such a manner.

That wasn’t so much about Severa’s parents (who were basically her aunt and uncle, and had been in a role of that sort for a lot longer than she’d been living in Ylisstol), but rather it was about O’wain’s mother. Now, Kjelle wasn’t ignorant to things that had happened in the past, and she’d heard plenty of stories that involved her parents and O’wain’s, but it still struck her as odd that she would spend a lot of time with this woman and she’d get treated like she wasn’t really wanted around. O’wain had always noticed that treatment as well and had called it out a few times, but nothing was going to change how his mother treated his friend, even if she was meant to be in a guardian-like role with her.

She shook her head, trying to clear those thoughts from her mind without making it obvious she wasn’t focused on whatever was happening there in the room. Even though it was be perfectly acceptable for her to mention that she was thinking about things related to her family, given that she’d just been with them earlier that day, it wasn’t proper behavior to admit to thinking about why someone’s mom was always giving her the cold shoulder. “You didn’t miss too much while you were out of town, really,” O’wain said, leaning into Kjelle so he could be whispering into her ear. “The big thing that you could’ve missed isn’t until next week, so go you for planning this when you did.”

She wasn’t sure what he was referring to, but she knew she needed to take a stab at it to not seem like she was ignoring him. “I planned it for this past week because I know that we’re going on that overseas trip soon and I wanted to see my parents before we left for that. Did I tell them that we’re doing that? No, but I didn’t want them worrying about me. I don’t think they’d do anything, but they’re just—”

“Dumb enough to distrust me in taking you on a trip?” Cordelia suggested, winking at Kjelle to let her know that she’d been able to hear every word she had said. “I don’t think they’d be concerned out of stupidity, but rather love and care for their only child. Besides, they would be justified in being somewhat concerned for your safety, given that we are going quite a bit further than anywhere in Ylisse or Ferox.” She tilted her head slightly to one side as she saw the girl’s reaction to what she was saying, her small nod and the tiny bite she made on her lip. “You can say whatever you want about your parents here, it isn’t like anyone will be reporting back to them.”

“Mother, you’d do it without even thinking about it, don’t lie.” Severa’s retort came without giving anyone else a chance to speak, because she felt the need to call her mother out for what she’d said before anyone could pretend like she was telling the truth. “I know that you’re constantly sending them everything Kjelle does, and you’ll be the one to tell them that you’re taking her to Hoshido without their permission.”

“H-hey now, who said I need my parents’ permission to go on a trip? I’m an adult, I can do whatever I want, whenever I want to do it.” The concept of not needing clearance to do something wasn’t new to Kjelle, but it was something that Severa typically ignored with her own parents, so hearing her call attention to that was strange. It wasn’t until O’wain nudged her and told her to rethink what she’d said that she caught onto the fact that she’d made an incorrect claim. “I mean, I’m almost an adult, I guess. But I haven’t had to ask my parents to do anything for years now.”

That fact lingered over everyone’s heads like a cloud, a reminder that this girl had separated herself from her family to have a more normal life. When the next person spoke, it was the other adult currently at the table, her eyes focused on the plate sitting in front of her rather than the person she was speaking to. “How do you think your parents would feel, hearing that they’ve raised such an independent woman? I think your mother would be amused at your behavior, and your father would…I don’t know, but he’d be proud of you.”

“My parents know what kind of person I am, they knew it when I told them I wanted to live here with Severa and her family so I could have a better life.” Kjelle paused, realizing the implied meaning of what she said and feeling the need to correct that right away. “Not that my life with them was bad, it was just hard living in the middle of nowhere. Do you know how long of a drive it was from there to, uh, anywhere?”

Without hesitation, the woman looked up and locked eyes directly with Kjelle, a coldness in her expression as she answered, “Yes, actually, I know pretty well how far that camp is from anywhere. I’ve had to make the trip from there in the snow.” As soon as she was finished speaking, her eyes were back on the plate, almost as if she’d only wanted to acknowledge Kjelle’s physical presence for that one moment. “That’s a day I’ll never forget.”

“There’s no need for this hostility, Lissa,” Cordelia told her, having watched the exchange and wanting to move past what her daughter had said to her before by getting the whole conversation and all its offshoots over with. “I know things here get a bit hard sometimes, but Kjelle hasn’t done a single thing wrong to you and you need to remember that. She isn’t either of her parents and doesn’t need to be treated like she is.”

“My apologies, but I only spoke like that because of what we were talking about, not who it involved. She knows that I’m on good terms with her parents.” Lissa was looking up once again, although now she was focused on O’wain rather than anyone she was talking to. “I just have some bad memories about being up at the camp, which the only time I’ve ever been there was not by choice and had horrible consequences.”

That was another story that all of the kids present had heard at some point, whether it be because it was the lead-up to their birth (in O’wain’s case), because one of their parents was involved as the savior (in Severa’s case), or because it was just a bad situation that never needed repeating, which was why Kjelle knew about it. “Okay, but you’re really going to speak to a young woman like she’s responsible for something stupid you did close to twenty years ago?” Cordelia had raised a hand, reaching out towards Lissa with mangled fingers that once had been perfect in appearance, based on how scarred they looked. “That would be like me speaking to you or your son with hatred because of this. You had nothing to do with it, of course, but someone you were close with did.”

“Miss Cordelia, as much as I love when you’re putting Mom into her place, can you, uh, maybe not do that about this?” His legs bouncing as he watched her showing off her damaged hand to his mother, O’wain knew he couldn’t just sit by and let her make her point. “We don’t like talking about that stuff, remember?”

“No, she’s fine, she’s making a point I forget sometimes.” Lissa laughed, although it sounded more like it was her trying to clear the air rather than make a joke of what she’d said. “I know that me getting uppity about things from before she was born isn’t needed, but I guess it just slips out every once in a while.”

Watching everything that was happening like it was the most exciting show she’d ever seen, Severa clapped her hands together loudly now that the drama seemed to be over to interject her personal question. “ _Oh_ -kay, now that we’re done arguing about things way older than I am, when’s dinner happening? We’re all sitting here, are we getting food any time soon or what? I’m starving, it’s not right to not feed your kid for this long!”

Everyone’s attention turned to her, their faces saying it all: she had chosen to break up what could’ve become a bit of a dispute between two longtime friends at the exact moment before any real arguing began. “I agree with Severa, on the ‘are we getting food’ point. I haven’t really eaten anything at all today,” Kjelle said, rubbing at her arm as she pulled her eyes off of her friend to look at the older women at the table. “I’m guessing that we are getting food, and that it’s being cooked or picked up right now, huh?”

“Why would we be gathered here if we weren’t?” Bringing her hand back to her side underneath the table, Cordelia smiled at both of the girls who’d spoken about food. “It should be here any moment now, we made sure to coordinate everyone’s arrival for the evening with the delivery of the meal, and naturally we had someone volunteer to be the one waiting for that delivery.”

Nothing needed to be said in response to that last part, as everyone present knew who was missing from the sixth chair at the table. Taking the opportunity to make every second count, Lissa jumped into a new topic of conversation, addressing Cordelia with, “Well, since he’s still not here, can we go through another rundown of your Hoshido trip with these children? I’m not trying to be a hovering mother, but I want to make sure that I know what you’re planning on doing while you’re all gone.”

It was an innocent request, one that was easily fulfilled, especially since the planning of the trip had been on all of their minds for the longest time. But when Kjelle tried to listen in on what was being said, O’wain knocked his elbow into her ribs, getting her attention away from the adults and onto him. “Don’t get too excited about what she says we’re going to be doing,” he told her under his breath, making sure to be as quiet as possible as he spoke. “We’re going to be doing our own things the whole time, which’ll be a lot more fun than any guided history tours or whatever could be.”

Getting excited about something she couldn’t hear wasn’t exactly possible, but Kjelle heeded O’wain’s advice anyway and tuned out what they were saying. She sat there, getting lost in her own thoughts, for the longest time, until a loud greeting rang through the room, causing everyone to stop talking and look for the source of the sound. It signaled the delivery of the food they’d been waiting for, and from there on the night was spent eating, then playing catch-up from the past week, with the adults getting more into what was going to be happening on that trip outside of the country as the night got later. When it came time for the guests to go home, O’wain gave his reminder to Kjelle once more, this time adding that he’d explain more in the future, before hugging her good night.

“Do you know what he’s talking about with all that?” she asked Severa, who put on an innocent face and shrugged in response. “Huh, okay, I don’t know if I trust this idea of doing our own things while we’re gone, but I guess I need to hear him out on it before I really decide what to do.”

“Trust him, I know that he knows what’s going on,” Severa replied after a moment, making sure that neither of her parents were within earshot. “And I know that Mother knows what’s going on as well, but don’t bring it up with her. At all. Can’t trust her not to tell Daddy or Lissa or even your parents.”

As her parents didn’t even know she was going to Hoshido in the first place, it was best that Kjelle stay far away from the possibility of them finding out from someone that wasn’t herself. If all went according to her plan, they’d never know she left the country, and therefore they’d never be left worrying if their daughter had been safe and okay at every moment. But that required it going according to her plan, and as she was figuring out, it seemed everyone else had plans she needed to follow as well.

* * *

True to what O’wain had said, there was something big happening the following week, just days before their trip to Hoshido was to begin. The issue was that Kjelle didn’t exactly understand what this big thing was, even as she was climbing into the car with Severa and her parents, all of them dressed in some of the nicest clothes they owned. “Aren’t any of you going to tell me where we’re going?” she asked, once they were all seated and ready to go. “I’m pretty sure I’d enjoy this more if I knew what was happening.”

“We’re going to a birthday party, haven’t you heard us talking about it before this?” From the front seat, Cordelia was looking at her reflection in the mirror, using it to touch up her makeup before they started moving. “Usually we don’t bring you two along when we go to this particular party, but this year we were specifically asked for you both to attend.”

“Great, I think that means we’re going to an old person party,” Severa grumbled, tugging at one of the sleeves of the dress she was wearing in an attempt to loosen it on her arm. “Why do old people even have birthday parties, all it means is that they’re a year closer to dying.”

“Don’t talk like that, sweetie. This isn’t a party for someone our age, if that’s what you’re implying with that.” Starting the car once he’d seen that Cordelia had finished with her makeup and both the girls were properly seated, Severa’s father shook his head at what he’d heard his daughter say. “It’s also not a party for someone either of your ages either, but you’ll understand why we have to go soon enough.”

The girls shared a look of surprise, hearing that this party was for someone who fell between the two generations. “There’s so many people it could be, now that I think about it.” Counting on her fingers as she thought of everyone she knew that fit that category, Kjelle looked at Severa right as her friend managed to pop the seam in her sleeve, nearing ripping it off in the process. “Uh, should you be doing that when we’re going somewhere important? Don’t you think your mom’s going to notice that you’re destroying your dress?”

“Do you think I care that she’s going to notice? She can’t be scolding me in front of all her friends, if they’re there. None of them would be scolding their kids, she can’t do something they wouldn’t be doing as well.” It was as if she’d managed to figure out a workaround to some of her mother’s behaviors, and Severa seemed pretty pleased with herself for it. “Anyway, continue with what you were saying, you think there’s a lot of people it could be?”

“If it wasn’t a birthday party, I’d be sure I knew who it was for, but all of the people I can think of have their birthdays, well, not anytime near now.” Kjelle was sure that she was right about that, given that they typically ended up going to the same parties every year because of the adults of the house dragging them along. “Maybe the birthday thing is a lie, and we’re going for something else. Maybe someone is dying, and they want to have one last party.”

“No one’s dying,” Severa’s father called back to them, showing that he was listening to what they were still talking about. “As I said, you’ll understand why we’re going soon enough.”

That wasn’t the kind of answer the girls had been looking for, but that was as much as they were going to get, especially after Cordelia chimed in with, “It’s not polite for girls your ages to be questioning what the adults are doing. When your father says that you’ll understand, you do not keep talking further, am I clear, Severa?”

“I wasn’t the one questioning it!” Severa snapped back, tugging at her other sleeve much like she’d done with the first one. “That was all Kjelle, I know you heard her loud voice saying everything, it wasn’t me I swear!”

Sinking into her seat at hearing her name be dragged into the argument, Kjelle wished that she wasn’t having to put up with what was happening around her. While she usually liked living with this family, there were times like this that it became more trouble than it was worth to be a second child under their roof. If anything, she wished that the arguments she had to listen to would be more like the ones she used to have with her own mom, which involved a lot of yelling but also a lot of laughing, once they realized they were being dumb about things. That never happened between Cordelia and Severa, and it typically turned into someone feeling upset and the other insisting they won the battle, while anyone who bore witness to it had to accept that their time had been wasted watching their squabble.

There was someone else who felt the same way about the arguing, and he happened to be the one driving. But even he was unable to get in between them, with Cordelia insisting that her daughter was being rude and Severa insisting her mother was being ignorant, to the point that he tried getting a word in and was promptly hushed. “Listen, Stahl, I know you _want_ to help, but defending her when she’s being disrespectful isn’t appropriate right now! If we hadn’t promised we’d be attending today I’d insist we turn around and spend the day at home, but it seems Severa gets to escape punishment today.”

“I know I’ll be having to deal with it when we’re on our trip anyway, so what’s even the point of acting like you’d punish me right now?” Grumbling as she put her hands on her cheeks, feeling like she wasn’t ever going to clear her name in the spat, Severa muttered a few disjointed thoughts that didn’t make much sense in their verbalized version, but it was always good for her to let her anger and frustration out rather than dwelling on it.

That set the tone for the rest of the car ride, which had the adults in the front talking about how they’d handled the argument, Severa lost in her own hurt feelings, and Kjelle looking out the window wishing she was anywhere but there at the moment. It wasn’t usual for her to want to be back with her parents, especially after she’d just been there so recently, but part of her was longing to be back with them, in their joke-filled and loving camp environment, rather than in this slightly heated place. She’d grown up in such a different world than the one she currently lived in, and it was hard for her to always keep herself rooted in the life she’d chosen for herself. She wanted so badly to find something more like what she’d once had, but without the isolation, and as much as she loved her current home she knew it wasn’t exactly where she was meant to be.

Soon she realized that she recognized the roads they were going down, streets that she’d traveled many times back when she’d come into Ylisstol with her parents. “I don’t mean to interrupt any of you,” she said, her eyes focused on what was outside the window, “but why are we headed towards the police station? Do we have to pick someone up? Did…did my parents come into town and this is their way of surprising me?”

“We’re going there for ourselves,” Cordelia answered, attempting to reach back behind her seat to pat Kjelle’s leg but missing her completely. “Did you think that this party would be at someone’s house? Gods, that would be crowded and impossible to have any control over! At least at this, we’ll be able to see everyone and be in the same general area, plus they have the recording booth so they can do this professionally.”

Hearing her idea get shot down stung a bit, but Kjelle let it roll off her shoulders without too much thought given to it. After all, it was silly to think that her parents would’ve come back into town for the second time that year, when they were so happy living their lives where they were. “Why do we need a recording booth for a birthday party? Is that what the birthday person wanted as a gift?”

“It makes sense that she’s confused, she’s never been to this before,” Stahl said, before Cordelia got any more words out. “Here, let’s put it this way, we’re gathering where we are because we have to do something to try and find a missing person. Does that make things any clearer?” It didn’t, but she didn’t want to tell him that when he was trying to be helpful so she gave a small nod and thanked him for his help.

Immediately after he wasn’t paying attention to her anymore she was looking over at Severa with raised eyebrows, hoping that her confusion was coming across clearly. If it was, she wasn’t told so, because all she got was a drawn-out sigh as a response. Instead of asking more questions she decided she’d wait until someone gave her answers on accident once they were there, because the last thing she wanted right then was to look like a burden on everyone she was currently with.

The station was crowded when they got there, almost as if they were the last to show up, and while Cordelia was freaking out about appearances and how bad it would look that they’d taken so long to get there, Kjelle wasn’t going to wait to go inside with her “family”. She could have waited for Severa, but she was still in a bad mood and dealing with her wasn’t going to be fun until she got over herself. That meant going to the front doors on her own, looking rather underdressed compared to the heels-and-dresses the two ladies that would be following her were wearing, and when she opened one of the doors she saw that inside was more people dressed the same. Her heart sank a little when she saw that there were so many older folks, all of whom were people she’d gotten to meet over the years, and it didn’t seem like there were too many people closer in age to her.

In fact, the only one she saw was a familiar dark-haired boy sitting rather close to the door, in the middle of a conversation with someone that she couldn’t see from her angle. When she did enter the station, no one really looked to see who’d come in, which allowed for her to sneak up on where O’wain was sitting and tackle his chair from behind without him catching on to what she was doing until her arms were wrapped around him. “Wow, you got here late,” he remarked, brushing her off so he could stand up and greet her with a proper hug. “Like, late enough that I think my uncle wrote you guys off as not showing up. Let me guess, Cordelia held you all up?”

“Between her and Severa, it was a pretty rough time getting here, yeah.” She wanted to keep talking to O’wain, but the person he’d been speaking with before she’d gotten there was still present, watching them both with zero expression on his face. Noticing that she didn’t recognize who they were, she got out of her hug and went to greet the man, holding out a hand for a quick shake. “Hey there, my name’s Kjelle, I don’t think we’ve met before and if you’re a friend of O’wain’s, you’ll probably become a friend of mine.”

“Kjelle, huh? As in, horse camp kid?” The man took her hand into his own and shook it eagerly, before kissing the top of it as he let his grasp go. “We have met before, but the last time I saw you, you were just a baby! My parents had you sitting next to my little sister, because you were both so close in age!” She was at a loss as to what to say to this guy, but it didn’t surprise her even slightly that he knew who she was because of her background. “Anyway, the name’s Bud, it’s great to properly meet you.”

His name struck a chord in her heart, almost as if she’d heard of him before without ever seeing his face. “His family used to go up and ride horses at the camp when they were all younger,” O’wain told her, offering her his chair so that she could be part of the conversation now that she knew the other person involved. “If we go walk around, I’m sure we’ll find his brother and sisters, but none of them are as cool as he is. Trust me on that one, Kay.” She knew that him referring to her with that nickname in conjunction with a playful tone meant that he was only moderately serious, but she wasn’t going to question him on why that was.

“Thanks for that vote of confidence there, O’wain, I really appreciate it, even if I, uh, think Yarne would have your head if he knew you were calling me coolest.” Bud seemed like the kind of chill guy that someone could talk to for hours, but Kjelle wasn’t sure if she wanted to commit to that. She recognized his name and his story from somewhere, and she was sure it was from something her parents had once said to her, but she didn’t want to think too much about it. There was so much going on there at the station that she couldn’t let herself get mentally hung up on one person, and that was when she decided to reject O’wain’s offer of his seat so she could go see who else was around.

O’wain seemed bothered that his offer went unaccepted, but he took his chair back without saying anything in her direction, and quickly he and Bud were back to their conversation. “I wish I could get right back to things as fast as that,” she said to herself as she moved on, walking past various groups of people in the middle of their own talks. Many of the groups were made up of older people, who she knew to be current and former members of the Ylissean police force, people who’d worked alongside her parents when they’d lived in Ylisstol. However, there were children of those officers standing around as well, and her biggest fear was that one of them would call attention to her sneaking around and ruin what she was trying to do.

Her adventure came to an end when she approached a pair in the corner, a woman with blue hair facing away from her talking to who she knew to be Lissa based on the occasional words she could hear coming from her. Those were few and far between, especially when drowned out by statements such as, “I don’t know why you think sending O’wain to Hoshido, even if it’s with Cordelia, is going to be a good idea. You _know_ what happened the last time someone from the family went there with her, aren’t you scared that it’ll happen again?”

“I know my son better than anyone in this world, Lucina. I appreciate that you’re concerned for your cousin’s safety, but he’ll be fine. Besides, wouldn’t it be nice if he ends up having a trip like you did? He could meet a nice Hoshidan girl, bring her home, have a happy ending that way…” Her voice trailing off as she noticed that someone was spying on their conversation, Lissa took a second to make sure it was Kjelle she was seeing before waving her over to invite her into what was being said. “Why, here’s the other reason I know everything’ll be okay on this trip! Do you think anything bad would happen to O’wain when this girl’s with him?”

“Would you have thought anything bad would have happened to my brother with me there with him?” Lucina’s response came without even blinking when Kjelle had appeared next to Lissa, unsurprised by the fact that she was there. “I’m sure we’re all just overreacting, but it’s been so long since he disappeared that I’m worried someone else will make that same choice.” In listening to what she was saying, it hit Kjelle that she knew exactly what this party was about, and that it might’ve been a birthday party in name but it was actually a gathering to reminisce about someone who’d been gone for a long time.

A very, very long time.

So long that she couldn’t actually remember having met him before, because she was still years from moving to Ylisstol when he’d disappeared. She’d heard stories about him, because he was someone that everyone had known, but at the end of the day he was only someone she’d heard about, never someone she’d known. Why did it matter that she was at this party for him, then? She didn’t know the guy, she wasn’t going to be very helpful in anything that anyone intended on doing that day. “Can you believe that it’s been eleven whole years since the last birthday we got to celebrate with him?” Lissa asked, going back to talking to Lucina because she knew that talking about things with Kjelle would go nowhere. That didn’t mean she couldn’t use her as an example, however. “The last time we saw him, some of these kids were half their size!”

“And some of us were exactly the same, since we were already grown.” Lucina pursed her lips together, fidgeting with her hands as she kept making eye contact with her aunt, ignoring the girl she’d dragged over with her. “You’re probably right though, O’wain is smart enough to not make stupid choices while out of the country, especially not with friends around. Inigo didn’t honestly have me there to keep his head in the right place, given that I was, ahem, wrapped up in other things.”

Poking out from behind Lucina’s back was Severa’s face, her having somehow targeted where her friend had gone in the room and making a beeline towards her. She was rolling her eyes at what she was hearing, and it took all of Kjelle’s strength not to laugh at what she was seeing. “Just who else we needed over here!” Lissa smiled when she realized that Severa was there, catching the girl by surprise as she was expecting more of a scolding than anything. “You’ll do your job at keeping my son focused on coming home from your trip, won’t you?” she asked, reaching out and grabbing Severa’s arm to get her out from where she was hiding.

“Yeah, of course,” Severa replied, not knowing the full extent of what was going on but being just aware enough to know that was probably the right answer. “What else would I do, abandon him at the airport? Make him stay with my mom’s cousin forever? Please, I like O’wain enough to at least let him come home with us.”

“There, now we have someone who won’t let him get left behind, I think I can sleep better knowing my son will be coming home.” Letting go of Severa’s arm now that she had the answer she was looking for, Lissa turned back to Lucina, who was shaking her head at what had just happened. “Please, don’t make me start getting all worried about my little boy and if he’ll be coming home to me. I know this is a sensitive topic for you but still!”

It was clear that they weren’t going to be finishing talking anytime soon, and so Kjelle, with Severa there to help her, found a way out of the corner and back to walking through the party without any real direction of where to go. “Sucks that I just had to lie to miss Lissa like that, but them’s the breaks, I guess.” Speaking with her head close to Kjelle’s so she didn’t have to be too loud to be heard, Severa’s words came as a bit of a surprise to her friend. “He’s not coming home with me once we’re there, and that’s his choice, not mine.”

“What do you mean, he’s not coming home with us?” Kjelle stopped dead in her tracks, pulling Severa to a stop as well. “What’s he going to do in Hoshido without us around?”

“Ri-i-ight, you haven’t been told about all this yet.” Playfully smacking her own forehead, Severa turned to look towards where O’wain was still in deep conversation with now two identical-looking guys by the door. “He’ll get around to it soon enough, either today or when we’re on the plane out there, it’s kind of important that you know before it’s too late.”

“I don’t think I want to know what this is about.” Replying with a sour taste in her mouth, Kjelle’s mind had already jumped to rather negative conclusions, the top one being that one of her best friends was so done with the life that he had that he was looking to start over in a brand-new country. “If he tells me, he tells me, if he doesn’t, oh well. If I find out he’s staying behind I’m dragging him home with us, he can’t abandon his family.”

“Abandoning family might just be something that runs in his blood,” Severa mumbled, still watching his animated conversation with those older guys. She took a moment to think about what she was going to say next, and when she spoke again her attitude had gone back to normal. “Come on, let’s go see if we can spy on people or something, until they get to the good parts of the party. Even though I don’t think this is much of a party, I don’t see any presents or even any fun hats!”

Realizing that Severa would have shown up in that conversation at a point that was past when Kjelle had been able to make sense of what was going on, she knew that she needed to explain why this wasn’t really a party in the fun sense. “That’d be because the person whose birthday it is isn’t here,” she explained, hoping that was enough to make things clear. “It would be weird to have normal birthday stuff when the birthday guy isn’t around.”

“Here I was, thinking that there had to be a different birthday today that we were celebrating, but I guess not!” Severa started walking back towards the entrance to the area, Kjelle following right behind her. They didn’t say anything to each other until they were outside, no one minding that they were stepping out, not even the people right by the door. “I kinda figured it might’ve been something to do with Inigo but I wasn’t positive, I didn’t know they did this for him every year. Years ago I got dragged to a ‘come home’ message-sending thing, but it’s not like I really knew the guy before he left.”

“That’s more than I can say about him, I don’t think I ever met him.” A feeling of not belonging where they were began to take hold in Kjelle’s chest, because what help was she going to be there if she didn’t know the guy, and Severa must have known not much more about him than she did. They were thrown into the mix for no apparent reason and they were just going to be underfoot if anyone was intending on doing something important there inside the station. “Severa, why are we here? Why did your parents make us come to this when we don’t really know the person it’s all about?”

“That’s something you’d have to talk to O’wain about, he was the one who told my mother that we had to come. I’m sure it’s something to do with what he needs to tell you about going to Hoshido, so I didn’t question it, but dang it I really wanted to.” Leaning back against the outer wall of the building, Severa was fiddling with her sleeve again, almost as if it still wasn’t loose enough on her. “I’d much rather be spending this time doing something fun, not looking like we’re going to a funeral.”

Glancing down at herself and how she was wearing a pair of nice pants and a plain shirt that didn’t scream “dressy” or “funeral” at all, Kjelle took a moment to think about everything she’d experienced since getting to the station before she said anything else. There was the fact that this was for a guy who’d been missing for over ten years, and it was apparently something that his family had been doing for a long time. Add in the part that he’d gone missing in Hoshido, and his sister was worried that their cousin was going to disappear as well, and it seemed almost like they had to be there because _they_ were going to Hoshido in the coming days. “You don’t think O’wain wanted us here because he wants us to know that he’s planning on doing what his cousin did, do you?” she asked abruptly, her thought coming to words faster than expected.

In response, Severa could only laugh, having to take an extended amount of time to collect herself before she could say anything. “I mean, that’s exactly what he’s going to do, but I don’t think it makes sense to bring that here, you know?”

“I wish you would stop saying that he’s doing that, I haven’t heard it come from him so until that happens, I’m not listening to a word of it.” Glancing towards the door to see if anyone had noticed they were outside and had come to join them, Kjelle’s mind was racing with the possibility that Severa wasn’t making jokes, and that the fear that she’d been hearing someone express was actually a reality. The only person whose word she was going to take on the matter was O’wain’s, though, and as far as she knew he was still inside talking to the same two guys he had been before. “Let’s just go back in, I’m not talking to you any longer about what’s going on around here.”

“Sure, sure, but when you find out I’m right I’m gonna give you the biggest ‘I told you so’ look that you’ll never forget it.” Sticking her tongue out to assert her dominance was something that Severa excelled in doing, so it was no surprise that she did it right then, jumping off the wall to go to the door and open it for her friend. If she was expecting Kjelle to walk in and let her tag along once more, she was dead wrong, as the moment her friend was through the doors she was weaving back through people, wanting to take a look at everyone else that was there.

She found herself nestled in a little sitting area, secluded enough that no one was around to talk to her but close enough to the action that seeing all the faces of everyone who was in attendance was possible. There were a lot of people that she recognized, but a lot of others that she didn’t, and it was hard to tell if any of them would recognize her if they were paying attention. Maybe they wouldn’t, or maybe they’d do what Bud had done and equate her with her parents—a common thing for people to do, given that they’d all known her parents long before any of them knew her. So many of the people she saw were on the older side, meaning that they were former coworkers of her parents’, and that their children were also around somewhere, and she had a better chance of being recognized by anyone’s child rather than their parents.

It almost happened when a girl that looked to be about her age spotted her and waved in her direction, but then she was dragged away by the two guys that O’wain had been talking to. It took a few moments after their eye contact had ended for her to realize that she knew who that girl was, that they’d done some school-related events together after she’d moved to Ylisstol, that she’d spent some of their time together just comparing family backstories and how they both ended up doing something far from their homes. She was struggling to remember her name, though, and she wished that she’d stayed talking with Bud long enough to get him to name-drop any of his siblings as a refresher, but there was no changing what had happened earlier.

The second time someone definitely recognized Kjelle came barely a minute later, after the girl and her brothers had left her sight. It was another set of girls, much older than she was but nowhere near the age of the parents that were present, and they were standing side-by-side, clearly on a mission to find someone in particular. If it wasn’t for differing hairstyles, the girls would’ve been nearly identical, and that was how Kjelle knew who they were, only knowing of one pair of twins off the top of her head. As they came close, she did her best to look like she was distracted by someone behind them, but they still gave her greetings by name as they passed her by. “Hello to you both,” she said, trying not to give into conversation with either of them. She knew she could be strong and keep watching everyone else, the last thing she needed was to get into the throes of gossiping with two ladies who loved telling her about when she was very young.

Soon after they’d walked back towards everyone else, once again saying hello to Kjelle as they passed, O’wain came charging over towards her, leaping over a chair to come to rest in it with his legs kicked up. “I heard Severa decided to start telling you things before I had the chance to,” he started, slightly out of breath from his rapid approach. “Listen, whatever she said, she was probably right, but we don’t listen to teenage girls about important adult matters, right?”

“Seeing as I’m also a teenage girl, I don’t get your point.”

“Just forget everything she told you and let me tell it to you again. We’re not coming home from Hoshido, Kay, not until we’ve found my cousin.” He was watching her for any kind of reaction, but all he was getting was a blank stare as she was mentally processing what she’d heard. “Come on, it’s a genius idea! Neither of us are in school, we don’t have anything better to do, we’re going to help my family out and bring Inigo home!”

“Why have you decided that I’m going to help you with this?” Things were starting to make sense, specifically the part where it had always been strongly suggested that she not tell her parents that she was going. While it had been presented to her that telling them would make them worry for her safety, she hadn’t once considered that the people telling her to keep this secret were planning something more for her. “I like my life here in Ylisstol, O’wain, I don’t want to give it up to help you out.”

“No one said you were giving it up permanently, it’s just until we find Inigo and convince him to come home. You know that doing that would make everyone in my family love you forever, no matter what, don’t you?” O’wain was flashing her a grin, so goofy and almost impossible to say no to.

But Kjelle couldn’t just decide right then to change her life in such a major way, and he needed to respect that. “If you really want me to help you out, you’ve got to give me time to actually think about this,” she said after a moment of considering what the pros and cons to what he was asking her to do were. “I guess you and Severa have been talking about this while I was gone, and that’s great, but why not ask her if she can do it? Why does it have to be me?”

“Because she’s fifteen, that’s why,” he bluntly replied, “and her mother’s the one making this possible. I’m not going to thank Cordelia by keeping her daughter behind without her. You know what she’d do, she’d decide she’s staying in Hoshido as well, and where does that leave her husband and her work? It’s much easier when the other person helping me out is a responsible adult in control of her own life.”

“Funny how I’ve gone from being a teenager to an adult in this conversation, but I guess I see your point. Don’t take that as a ‘yes’, though, because I’m not sure what I’m doing with you. I’m going to Hoshido as a late graduation gift, just like you are, and I’m planning on coming home unless something convinces me otherwise.” Kjelle loved being able to put her foot down about something, especially when it was something this bizarre. She’d never expected to be asked if she could stay behind in a foreign country with a friend, even before setting foot in the country for the first time! “Now can we not talk more about this today, this is all just really stupid and I—”

“Dealing with my missing cousin is not stupid, Kjelle, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t say that.” Cutting her off was usually a mistake, but in this instance she understood that she might have crossed a line with how she’d worded that statement, so O’wain was right to stop her where he had. “I have an idea, why don’t we go see what everyone else is doing and see if it gets our minds off all this for a little bit?”

She shook her head, wanting to roll her eyes but knowing that she was probably already on thin ice with him given what she’d already done. “So we’re going to go talk to people who are definitely going to talk to us more about your cousin, or ask us about our upcoming trip?” she asked, watching him sit up properly in the chair so he could rise to his feet, pulling her up to hers once he was able to. He didn’t answer her, a sure sign that she’d called him out on what he intended to do, but she didn’t expect that he’d be so obvious about doing that.

In the time they’d been talking, the setting had changed a bit and the way people were speaking with each other looked a lot different. As O’wain led her through the crowds towards somewhere in particular, Kjelle could see that some of the groups had gotten bigger, with what looked like whole families standing talking to each other. They were getting waves and shout-outs as they passed some people, the twins from before saying hi to them both very loudly and almost stopping O’wain in his tracks, but he remained resilient in getting to where he intended to go without too much delay.

She immediately recognized one of the people they were coming up on as someone she’d already been conversing with that day, but before she could tell him that he was reaching out to the group with a loud greeting. “I wasn’t sure if coming with a friend was allowed or not, but as Kjelle is a harmless friend who could do no wrong, I assumed it would be forgiven!” he called, coming right up to a gap in the little group and sticking his head into it, her hanging back to stay out of what might happen. “What is the plan for the rest of the gathering time, are we going to send out the messages soon?”

“Always so impatient, O’wain,” Lucina chided, before looking behind him to see Kjelle really was back in her presence. “As for you bringing her along, she can’t really be part of the messages because the only time she met Inigo was when she was months old, he wouldn’t really care if she had anything to say.”

“Then we can leave her out of that part, but…if you don’t mind me asking, why is someone he has met before not allowed to be part of the events, yet someone you didn’t even know until after his disappearance can be?” Letting go of his friend’s arm so he could use both hands to point fingers at a gray-haired man standing at Lucina’s side, O’wain shook those finger guns in an accusing manner towards the man while his cousin sighed. “I smell someone playing favorites, if you don’t mind the accusation.”

“O’wain, I’ll have you know that I’m the last person out of everyone here who saw Inigo before he disappeared,” the man replied, crossing his arms over his chest for a moment, until he decided to drop them in favor of wrapping one around Lucina, who seemed uncomfortable with the contact for a moment before visibly loosening up. “Why else did you think Lucy and I met in the first place?”

Clearing her throat, Lucina interjected with, “We continued meeting because of Inigo’s unknown whereabouts and your willingness to help with finding him. We originally met because you happened to be outside the home we were staying in when we were getting ready to leave Hoshido and I quite literally ran into you.” She forced a laugh, while the man took in a sharp breath and tried his best to look like this wasn’t the truth. “Then I found out you were a prince, and that your guards lived next door to where we were, and I figured that would have been the end of it, until it wasn’t.”

“Yeah, yeah, listenin’ to some kind of happily-ever-after story in this place doesn’t exactly seem right,” the other man present, a tall, sturdily-built guy that towered over everyone he was around with ease, added, looking at Lucina with an unimpressed expression. “When your brother decided he was gonna just up and disappear, he ruined a lot ‘a plans he’d made with me for after I got done with school. He still owes me for some things, and I hope he knows that he’s not livin’ that down.”

“Between you, Cynthia, and Morgan, you really want to make him pay for things when he comes home,” Lucina told him, being as neutral in how she responded as possible. “I know that he made some promises, but when something happened to him that forced him to go back on his word, you can’t hold that against him for ten years, Brady, you just can’t.”

There was some stammering as Brady tried to figure out what he could say to defend his idea of holding promises against someone for so long, but it was the other guy who spoke first, gathering everyone’s attention with his words. “I’ve said this many times, nothing forced him to go back on his word. He got in with some of our royal guard and things spiraled out of control from there, but where he went to settle those issues I have no idea.”

“I really appreciate that you’re trying to fix things here, Takumi, but you can let Brady and I bicker, it’s fine by us both. He grew up around me, I know him better than anyone else would.” That was met with a retort that was then replied to with a mocking tone, and it was clear that the two of them had been lost to their own kind of argument, leaving Brady awkwardly standing beside them listening to what they were saying, while O’wain turned to Kjelle and motioned for her to follow him once more.

When they were back towards where they had been sitting before, he broke out a heavy sigh, shoulders being thrown forward as he delivered the long breath. “I never know how to act around those two when they’re together, sucks that we couldn’t get much out of Takumi to help us with Hoshidan stuff but I guess we got something, right?”

“Hold on, you intentionally walked us into that hoping that you’d get news to help you with your plan to find your cousin, and instead got us stuck watching that fighting?” Kjelle asked, sounding surprised because she was, not having expected O’wain to be so devious with his actions. “I’m impressed, but at the same time I’m also bothered that you really want to convince me to help you with this.”

“Look, I know Lucina would do anything to get her brother back, she even ended up hooking up with a _prince_ in her attempts to bring him home, I’m going to do what I can to make sure she doesn’t have to get more desperate.” Underneath his immature exterior, there had always been a real gentleman inside of O’wain, and it was shining through right in that moment. “I just want to be helpful to my family, even if it’s only once. You know how much of a problem I’ve been to my family, so you get why this matters to me.”

Sitting back down in the chair she’d been using before, Kjelle didn’t want to verbally agree with him but she knew she didn’t need to. It was common knowledge, once someone met O’wain’s entire family or had someone who knew them, that he was quite literally the black sheep of the family. He didn’t have any sort of relationship with his father, and hadn’t wanted to have one for at least as long as Kjelle had known him (in fact, the first time they’d properly met had been the last time he’d seen his father), and while he tried to pretend like that didn’t bother him everyone knew it did. His mother had worked so hard to make sure he grew up happy and loved, but when he unmistakably took after his father instead of her, she was left in an uncomfortable spot.

That was so different than Kjelle’s own situation, where she’d always been appreciated by her parents for who she was and what she’d become. They didn’t mind that she’d grown up to be more independent than either of them could handle given their living situation, and had chosen to relinquish control over when she wanted to go somewhere else. That wasn’t something that was really possible for O’wain, because of his mother’s overbearing need to be part of his life and have her one little piece of happiness around at all times. That was the fact that made Kjelle gasp, realizing that if she helped him with what he intended on doing, she was going to be treading a dangerous path, something she addressed with, “Wait, won’t doing this break your mom’s heart?”

“It’ll hurt her a bit at first, but she knows I’m growing up and won’t be her little boy forever, she can just learn it faster than I’m sure she was expecting.” O’wain spoke his words with a tinge of sadness in his voice, almost as if he hadn’t considered what Kjelle had brought up before she’d said it. “She’s already beside herself because I’m going on this trip without her, and the last time I left the country on my own was the last time I saw my father, so it’s not going to be easy for this to happen to her.”

“You’re really okay with doing this, huh?” Hearing him say that almost made her sad, but Kjelle wasn’t one to wear her emotions out in the open for everyone to see, not even one of her best friends. “Not like I’m surprised, seeing how much thought you’ve put into this, but since you overlooked how your mom will feel, maybe you haven’t put enough thought into it after all.”

“I’d think you, of all people, would remember that thinking isn’t exactly my strong suit all the time,” he said with a chuckle, the sadness having left his body without a trace. “I guess I just got focused on how happy everyone will be once Inigo’s back that—”

“O’wain, are you joining us for the message this year or not?” Breaking through what he was saying came a loud, rough voice that Kjelle immediately recognized as belonging to her friend’s uncle, and he scrambled to get an answer to the man without even caring that he’d been interrupted in the first place. She shook her head in his wake, not knowing what to do because talking to him had been what she’d been planning on doing for that bit of time, but when she saw Severa looking around for her, she realized that she could always just go back to her other best friend and pretend like nothing had happened.

No matter how much anyone wanted to talk to her about it, she wasn’t going to bring up the concept of her staying behind in Hoshido again, not until she’d really taken the time to think about the possible consequences. It was at times like those that she wished she could curl up with a thick blanket in her parents’ bedroom and talk to them both about what she should do, but that wasn’t possible without them knowing she was leaving Ylisse in the first place. She could perfectly envision their reactions to her saying she was going to be gone, with one of them telling her they were proud of her for going new places and having fun, while the other would remind her not to get to into too much trouble.

Her, in trouble, while on a trip where she needed to be on her best behavior? She’d certainly hope they’d raised her better than that—and the idea of staying behind in a foreign country to help find a missing person was striking her as immediate trouble. How would she manage to behave if she was already breaking rules by being there? She needed more time to think about the decision, and she knew she didn’t have much time at all.


	2. Hoshidan Adventure

If there was anything that could be said about Hoshido, it was that the concept of a royal family being in such close quarters with the normal population was working well for everyone on either side of the spectrum. The citizens didn’t seem to mind that they were working right next door to where their royal family was living, and the royals seemed perfectly fine with there being commoners around them at all times. Coming from somewhere that didn’t have a royal family set in stone (but did have a long-time police chief that was regarded just as highly as royalty), it was a bit of a culture shock to see the harmony that everyone lived in, but within days of arrival it was easily ignored.

Helping matters immensely was the fact that the place Cordelia had arranged for them to stay was within the boundaries of the royal palace, in the house belonging to one of the guards. For being a single man, her cousin Subaki had quite the spacious place to live in, large enough that he could accommodate four guests without asking anyone to share a bed, and even with them there he still had room to offer others to spend time at the house as well. “It’s one of the perks of my position,” he’d explained when he’d first brought the travelers to the house upon their arrival to Hoshido. “We all have homes much larger than we personally need, in case we find ourselves needing the extra space.”

“It comes in handy every time I come to visit,” Cordelia said in thanks, bowing her head at Subaki as she spoke. “You’ve always been quick to offer me a room and full meals, no matter what you’re doing that isn’t taking care of me.”

“That would be what family is for, we’ve managed to have a relationship despite the distance so I’ll do what I can do maintain it.” He seemed pleasant enough, if maybe a bit too formal in Kjelle’s mind, but she didn’t feel right thinking anything negative about him in his own house. After the first day (which was mostly spent sleeping, given the time difference between Hoshido and Ylisse), they got to spend more time talking to Subaki, learning things about Hoshidan culture and how he’d ended up where he was.

As he’d already made clear, he was employed by the royal family to some capacity, and he did explain that he was in the guard for the youngest of the royal siblings. “When you say ‘youngest’, how young are you talking?” O’wain asked, eager to learn all he could about where they now were, something that was obviously being done because he had the intentions of staying there longer than he was supposed to. “Like, my age? Severa’s age? Younger than that?”

Subaki looked at O’wain, sizing him up for a moment before shaking his head, gesturing with his hand that his guesses were a bit low. “She’s in her mid-twenties now, I’ve been working with her since I turned fifteen as a tutor and became a guard when I got older. Not that anyone ever guesses her age correctly upon meeting her, Princess Sakura has the face of a young girl and the personality of one too, even if she’s more mature than expected.”

“All those times I’ve talked to Takumi about his life here in Hoshido and it never quite clicked that he wasn’t the youngest of the royal siblings.” Cordelia was stroking her chin in thought, listening carefully to what was being discussed. “I knew there were two princes and two princesses, but I assumed he was youngest given that he was so quick to abandon his royal position when given the chance.”

“The position of younger prince, in a world where it would be unlikely he would ever take the throne, would be just as isolating as younger princess, so his decision to give up his claim to the throne for love was justified.” Looking to his cousin with a small smile, Subaki continued with, “At any rate, he seems to be happy there in your part of the world, judging by his yearly pictures and frequent letters from him and his dearest. She was a joy to have visit when you brought her along oh-so long ago, Cordy, and I’m sure she’s a perfect match for him.”

“Please, she’s come on her own volition since then, when she was in the middle of courting the prince and all.” Waving her hand to show that Subaki didn’t need to call back to something so far in the past, Cordelia froze when she decided that perhaps that wasn’t the part of what was being said that she needed to focus on. “Takumi is very happy where he is, and I’m sure not having the pressures of being royalty weighing on him has done wonders.”

Leaning over to get some whispering in while her mother continued talking, Severa said to Kjelle, “I’m sorry, but why are we supposed to care about them gossiping about that prince-y boy back home? We care about things actually here in Hoshido, right?”

“I don’t know, learning this kind of stuff is pretty fun,” Kjelle replied, trying to tune Severa out so she could keep listening to what was being said. “And anyway, we’re probably not going to be going anywhere anytime soon, so why not learn about what they have to say about someone who used to live here?”

“You don’t understand, they’ll not stop talking if they’re not told to. You’re just enabling my mother to be the most annoying woman she can be.” It was hard to believe that Severa could be right about that, but it was true; after nearly an hour of going back and forth with catching up about things, Cordelia was getting into recounting the events that had resulted in her losing part of multiple fingers, with Subaki listening like he’d never heard the story before. They were so wrapped up in what they were discussing that neither of them saw that O’wain was getting uncomfortable with it, although the two girls did.

Of course, everyone learned quickly that he was not okay with the conversation when he ended up screaming up after Cordelia brazenly name-dropped his father. “Can we _not_ mention him, please?” he asked, sounding angry based on the deep breaths he was taking to calm himself. “I know he’s an important part of that story but he also broke my mother’s heart and left us so that he could go back home and be alone, I don’t want to hear his name in such light conversation.”

“I have heard this story a time or two, so it would be fine by me if we skipped over those details, especially if they’re bothersome to one of my guests.” Just like that, Subaki was ready to make things right again, and Cordelia had to backtrack what she was saying to tell the story a different way. It wasn’t enough for O’wain, though, knowing that he’d also heard the story before and didn’t want to sit through it even with the careful censoring, so he stood up and left the room without saying anything about where he was going,

In a moment of blind desire to make sure her friend was okay, Kjelle jumped to her feet and followed him, finding that he was walking outside the house in the middle of the day without direction. “Wait up!” she called after him, but he must not have heard her as he closed the front door behind him. She was right there in his shadow, throwing the door back open to see him sitting on the front step of the house, not doing anything but staring out into the distance. “O’wain, what do you think you’re doing? You can’t just leave without saying that you’re going somewhere!”

“I wasn’t going far, and even if I was, we’re in a peaceful place. No one would dare hurt me around here, if Subaki’s right and this place is as great as it sounds.” His eyes hadn’t moved an inch even after he’d initially heard her voice coming after him, but O’wain was definitely ready to listen to anything Kjelle had to say to him. “I can’t imagine what it’s like, living like this with royalty. I always thought it was weird that everyone in Ylisstol knew who my uncle was, but he’s just a police guy, can you think about working for someone who’s royal and having everyone know you because of that?”

“My parents were basically royalty there in our town in Ferox, if that’s what you’re asking me to think about,” Kjelle replied, closing her eyes as she thought back to growing up outside such a small town, where her parents made up a sizable fraction of the police force, to the point that everyone knew who they were even though they weren’t natives to the area. She’d always had people in school know of her because they knew her parents, even if she didn’t like them in the slightest, and it had made her wish she wasn’t so recognizable. “I know it’s not the same as a real royal would have to deal with, but it was still a lot to go through every single day. Add in the part where most of my time was spent at the police station and it makes you wonder if the attention is why I wanted out of there.”

“So maybe you wouldn’t cut it as a princess then, got it.” Hanging his head, O’wain seemed to lose where he was going with what he was saying, because when he resumed speaking he was on something entirely different. “I wish I didn’t have to come here with Cordelia, she’s a lovely woman but I think being here with her is only going to make what I’m going to do harder, because she’s going to try stopping me, I know it.”

Out loud, Kjelle replied with, “This was the only way this trip was going to happen, let’s be thankful she loves us both enough to spend the money to bring us here.” In her head, however, she was singing a different tune, wishing that she could tell her friend that it was for the best that he had that barrier between himself and disappearing from his old life, because he needed to think rationally and not escape the life he’d been living for so long. It was hypocritical for her, of all people, to want someone to keep with the life they’d been given, but at least when she’d decided to change everything about her life she had somewhere relatively nearby that she could go to make the changes. If O’wain really did stay in Hoshido, he’d be a day’s worth of travel away from any family, and if anything were to happen to him it’d be entirely possible that no one would ever find out about it.

She wanted to tell him to rethink what he was planning so badly, but she didn’t want to ruin his trip by being negative about anything. It was a tricky situation she found herself in, and she could only hope that something would convince him to change his mind and come home with all of them when they left. That was the only time they really talked about the decision for the next several days, even though there were instances were they’d share glances that were clearly him considering something someone had said in regards to what he was intending on doing. Nothing about Hoshido was compelling enough to get Kjelle to want to stay, even if they were living a good life within the boundaries of the royal family’s home, but that might have been because no one was trying to make her stay. She’d come into the country intending on going back home, whereas O’wain had it set in his mind that this was where he was going to be staying.

Not helping matters was the fact that Subaki and Cordelia seemed happy to have long conversations about the perks of being in Hoshido whenever they were out as a group, both going back and forth about how lovely the country was and how great it was to be there. “I wished from time to time that I could stay longer, but my home and career were in Ylisse and I couldn’t turn my back on what I’d built there,” Cordelia said as they were walking through the city’s center square, looking at the vendors that had gathered for some kind of farmers’ market. “Still, getting to visit every few years has reminded me of how great this place is.”

“It also reminds you of how great I am, correct?” Subaki asked, clearly baiting the answer out of his cousin. When she laughed and shrugged, he took it in stride and moved on with the conversation. “At any rate, you’re always welcome to spend time here in Hoshido with me as often as you like, and bringing everyone along as you have is allowed too. They’re fine people, your daughter and her friends, maybe even finer than the last bunch you brought.”

“I think Lucina would have your head for insisting such a thing, and it’s not like any of these three would end up courting royalty completely on accident.” Waving her arms in a grand gesture towards the three she was talking about, Cordelia noticed that they all seemed to be focused on something happening on the other side of the square, causing her to stop in her tracks to get a better look at what they were watching. “Subaki, by chance, is there a royal display happening today?”

He thought for a second, before decisively replying, “Not that I’m aware of, because if I were aware of one, I’d be in it, don’t you think?” His laugh caused Cordelia to laugh as well, her realizing that she’d asked a silly question to someone whose job was to guard a member of the royal family in public situations. “It could just be someone coming into the market to do some shopping, they do tend to express their freedoms whenever possible.”

“I want to get a closer look,” O’wain said under his breath, before grabbing at the first hand he could see out of the corner of his eye (which was Severa’s, and she yanked it away when his fingers brushed against hers) and making a beeline towards where the commotion was. When she saw that he was going on his own, and that the person he’d tried to get to go with him was watching him in disgust, Kjelle took it upon herself to be his moral compass for the moment and follow him, just in case he tried to do something when watching.

There wasn’t as big of a crowd as they’d thought once they joined it, as it was a measly row of people that just happened to be rather long, but easy to push their way into. It was while standing there, among native Hoshidans cheering for the presence of one of the members of their royal family, that the two of them looked at each other and took in the exact emotions the other’s face was sharing. O’wain looked excited to see royalty, despite having a member of that very royal family married into his own family, while Kjelle seemed unimpressed and knew she was only there to keep him in line. They went back to watching when they heard the cheering grow louder, and it was then that O’wain saw someone he recognized, but rather than announcing that with words, he did so by stomping on Kjelle’s foot as hard as he could. “Gods, could you be any rougher?” she loudly asked him, without realizing how far her voice would carry.

“I believe the correct response to that would be ‘that’s what she said’, but it seems a she has already said that.” The crowd had fallen completely silent as the voice spoke, the speaker being someone who was in the middle of the cleared area—someone _with_ the member of royalty. In the moments after the words were said, the man who’d spoken them came closer to where Kjelle was hopping on one foot, her toes throbbing from how hard O’wain had stomped on them, and a hand was offered to her for support. “Here, it seems something is ailing you at the moment. Would you prefer assistance now while you’re living, or would you rather it while you’re dead?”

“Is it appropriate to speak to strangers in such a way?” That came from the woman alongside him, her trying to pull him back before he could make anyone uncomfortable with his behavior. “You could be crossing a line, or walking into a trap, and trust me, we do not need any traps being walked into here today. Do you think Hinoka would appreciate you going missing because you felt the need to crack a joke?”

“She offered herself up to it, sorry for choosing a moment of lightheartedness over the constant cover of darkness in my life.” The hand was recalled, before Kjelle even noticed that it was there, and the man tilted his head as he faced her, his eyes closed in what had to be deep thought. “I think this one might be as much of a stranger as you insist, but the other one, to be honest, feels familiar to me somehow.”

The woman pushed him aside, leaning in to stare at O’wain closer for a second before making a clicking sound with her tongue a few times. “Maybe if you’d open your eyes for a change you’d see that he’s just some commoner, Azama,” she said, turning to walk down the still-lined path the crowd had created. “If we’ve seen him before, it’s been in situations like this. Now let’s go, we’re just bait for a trap at this point.”

“What in Naga’s name was that all about?” O’wain asked quietly to Kjelle once the two had finally passed them by. “It was like they singled us out or something, and for them to get so close to me to stare, ugh, no thanks! I live a life untouched by their kind of royalty, the only place they’d see me might be in family pictures if Takumi even sends those.”

He hadn’t been watching his volume either, but instead of someone who was part of the group being cheered for overhearing him, it was some of the people around them, who began loudly asking how he knew of the former prince Takumi. Since O’wain wasn’t sure what kind of conditions he’d left his country on, he was happy to divulge as much as he could about the newest member of his family, and the Hoshidan people seemed happy to hear that their prince was living a peaceful life where he’d ended up. “What’s all this about my brother?” another voice questioned, and O’wain turned from the stranger next to him to be staring directly into the narrowed eyes of a woman in somewhat royal regalia. “I’ll have you know that speaking lies about him isn’t appreciated around here.”

“So then I’m good because I’m just telling everyone how he’s doing, right?” O’wain flashed his goofy grin in the woman’s direction as her glare narrowed further. “Look, if I were back home I could go across town and see him without any problems, I think I’m allowed to talk about how he is.”

“O’wain, I think you should probably shut up,” Kjelle muttered, hoping that the woman who was definitely a princess didn’t hear what she was saying but that her friend did. “You’re barking up the wrong tree on this one.”

“Why should I shut up? I’m not…” His voice trailed off as he properly looked at the woman he was staring down, as her mouth opened to say something else, and he began to prepare himself for whatever verbal onslaught was about to come at him. Instead, all she gave was a slow chuckle, before holding out a hand for a shake. All at once, he began rambling in apology for what he’d been doing up until then: “You’re Princess Hinoka, we’ve met before, oh gods I’m so sorry I didn’t realize you were her until just now and I guess you’re right to be angry that I’m here telling everyone about your brother when you might not even know, will you forgive me?”

Again she chuckled, but Hinoka didn’t say a word to him; all she did was hold that hand out until he carefully took it and gave it a single shake. After he’d let go she smiled at him and walked off, following in the direction her companions had gone in before her. “I told you, you were barking up the wrong tree,” Kjelle teased, nudging him in the arm as he stared slack-jawed while he watched Hinoka walk away. “I hadn’t even met her before and I could tell she was a princess, how were you mouthing off to her without catching on?”

“Look, the last time I saw her was the one time I happened to be around when she was having a video call with her brother, it was awkward then and it’s still awkward now.” His hand was trembling from having had to touch royalty, and it was clear that O’wain needed to step away from the whole crowd and get back to who they’d been with. He was jittery as they walked, holding his arm out in front of him like he was carrying a disease on his fingers, and nothing had changed in his behavior by the time they’d found where Severa, Cordelia, and Subaki were all waiting for them.  
Rather than explain where they’d gone and what they’d done, they acted like nothing out of the ordinary had happened with them in the crowd and tried to seamlessly ease back into the day’s activities. Ready to assist them, just like he’d been their whole trip so far, Subaki took control of the situation and held up a file folder that seemed to have quite a few papers in it. “This is why I needed to come to the market today, if there’s anything anyone else wants to do while we’re here there’s plenty of time for it while this gets sorted out,” he explained, waving the folder just enough that anything written on it wasn’t able to be read easily. “Don’t worry, it’s nothing important, just some notary things that need to be sorted out.”

“If it’s what I think it is, I’m shocked you’ve waited until now to handle it,” Cordelia told him, smiling as she ignored trying to read the folder, unlike the three younger people. “If it isn’t, then you may have to explain to me later what it is you need notarized. I was under the impression that you had your life under control.”

He winked at her, before turning his back to head towards a little shop along the market’s wall. “It’s exactly what you think it is, I needed to get a final opinion on some things before I brought it here to be made official. We’ll be addressing this at a later point though, so please, go find something to do around here to spend the time it takes to handle this.” If anything, Subaki was polite in his insistence that they do something, and so it became a couple hours of milling around the shops and carts at the market, looking at what Hoshidan goods were available and trying to ignore the fact that two of them had been mouthing off towards a member of the royal family and her guards.

When he rejoined them, his folder looked exactly the same but he was holding it tighter than he had been before, and he was unwilling to talk about what it contained, going so far as to start walking off when Cordelia teasingly asked him if he’d gotten what he was aiming to get. “You know, it doesn’t make sense to hide what’s in it when I already know,” she protested, following him and causing the three younger people to quickly fall into her shadow. “Don’t tell me you’re scared to address it in public.”

“It isn’t a feeling of being scared, Cordy, but rather one of not wanting to have the people I serve seeing what I’m condoning. I’d figure you, out of everyone, would understand my reasons for that.” He clutched the file closer to himself, picking up his pace and causing everyone else to have to do the same. “We will address this when the time is right, whenever that might be!”

“How much you want to bet he’s going to show us something scandalous when he opens that file?” Kjelle suggested to O’wain and Severa, both of whom had to resist laughing at the idea of him carting around something embarrassing, that being the reason he didn’t want anyone to see it. Deep down, they all knew that it wasn’t going to be that simple of an answer they’d be getting, but none of them could guess exactly how important the contents of that file were to all of them. Or, at least, none of them had any reason to make that guess, because it had seemed at first that Subaki was really out and about getting official paperwork notarized in front of guests, and that was something that seemed normal for him.

It wasn’t addressed again that afternoon, nor did anyone bring it up after they’d gone back to his house for the evening, acting as if nothing had happened at all out in the market in regards to a mystery file. The incident with the royal who had come out to mingle amongst her people did get a quick mention as a punchline to a joke O’wain made, but whereas Kjelle knew he was being serious as he talked about coming face-to-face with a princess everyone else assumed he was just making something up for the sake of comedy. That was a bit of a traumatizing thing to think back on, being so loud and forceful that the attention of a living, breathing member of a foreign country’s royal family noticed them, so Kjelle was thankful that no one thought he was being serious.

Severa did definitely bring part of it up when they were laying down for the night, asking in all seriousness, “Did you guys really see a princess or did it just look like one? Because if you really saw one and I wasn’t there for it, I’m going to be mad.” Thanks to how she was fixated on the less-embarrassing part of the joke, Kjelle was willing to tell her that yes, they had in fact seen one of the Hoshidan princesses there in the market, and she reacted by puffing her cheeks out in anger. “That’s not fair, now I’m going to ask Subaki if he can introduce us to the princess he’s guard for so I can see one too!”

“I-I don’t think that’s necessary,” Kjelle replied, her eyes going wide as she considered the possibility of Princess Hinoka having told her sister what had happened and said sister knowing what to expect if that meeting was arranged. The possibility of everything related to that going horribly wrong was too high, given that the royal family was aware of O’wain and who he was, and if Hinoka happened to mention that he’d been there and a meeting happened…it would just bring that split-second of panic back up.

“What, are you scare to actually meet royalty?”

“Did I say that’s what it was? I don’t think so, I just said that I don’t think it’s necessary for Subaki to have to get involved with this.” She was going to fight that fight as long as she had to in order to save her skin and prevent any kind of recollection as to what had really happened there in the market, but Kjelle knew that if it became too much to keep fighting the idea she’d have to give it up. There was already so much on her mind about being on the trip that adding something else didn’t feel like a great use of her time.

In the end, Severa got her wish after badgering her mother’s cousin the entire next day, begging him to get them into a meeting with his princess so she could say she’d met real royalty and not just someone who pretended to be royal. Sakura was a gentle princess, not as brash as her sister had been in the marketplace, but she seemed to be excited to have people who wanted to meet her in specific and so the experience went over fairly well. She invited them back to visit with her as often as they wanted to during their stay, as long as she wasn’t going to be on business; Cordelia didn’t seem too pleased with the offer but Severa was going to override her mother’s wishes as much as she could if it meant getting to sit in a royal study and talk to someone who had a claim to a throne, no matter how distant. That was where they spent a lot of their time for the rest of their trip, which Subaki was fine with because it allowed for him to get work done while still being present in his family’s time with him.

On the group’s last full day in Hoshido, after spending the day in the market with Sakura and her showering them with little trinkets she thought they’d like, Subaki called all of his visitors into the living room of his house and had them all sit on the floor just to hold the file out in front of them, surprising the younger three as they’d almost forgotten about that whole incident after the things that had followed it. “I did say I would address this when the time was right, and after over a week of exploring the corners of my fair city I figured it was about time to bring this out,” he said, opening the file and holding up an official document that had a crest on it unfamiliar to the young people—minus it being prominently displayed on a single sign on the office he’d disappeared into with the file in the first place. “Feast your eyes on my paperwork as a Nohrian citizen. You may make noises, but be quiet, none of the neighbors are aware I have this.”

“I thought you were Hoshidan, like the rest of the family? What’s up with this ‘Nohrian citizen’ stuff?” Severa was eyeing the paper suspiciously, almost as if she was trying to read it for herself, but the angle Subaki was holding it at made it impossible to see anything but the reflective crest on the paper. “Mother, tell me what he’s talking about right now!”

“Subaki, could you be a dear and hand me mine?” Ignoring the fact that her daughter’s jaw was dropping at what she’d just heard, Cordelia held out her hand and didn’t drop it until Subaki had given her a piece of paper identical to his, which she smiled at once she had it. “It’s beautiful, reminds me of the time we had to cross the border to grant our grandfather his last wish.”

“The Nohrian guards didn’t suspect us at all, the documents looked so legitimate that they didn’t think to question their authenticity, even though we were back over the border five minutes later and never crossed it again.” Chuckling to himself as he admired his paper some more, Subaki happened to look over it to see the three younger people all staring at him and Cordelia both with varying levels of confusion and surprise in their faces. “Ahem, I suppose this is where I explain that the booth in the market specializes in official documentation for both Hoshido and Nohr, which given the disdain the countries have for each other it’s quite fortuitous that we have somewhere so close by to forge paperwork for us.”

All at once, the three repeated the two key words— _forge paperwork?_ —followed with questions that were barely audible over the others. O’wain was asking, excitedly, what the purpose of it was (and Subaki did wink when he heard the tail end of what he said), while Severa was once again targeting her mother looking for answers, and Kjelle was simply asking for someone to explain to her why this was happening. As far as she’d known when she’d agreed to have this trip be her graduation present, this was going to be a normal, slightly-educational trip to a country half a world away from the places she knew. Now she was getting into people willingly possessing forged papers to gain access to other countries, and that wasn’t what she’d signed up for when she’d agreed to come on the trip.

“It isn’t exactly something that someone in my position should ever have done in the first place, but as Cordy already said, we initially did it for family reasons. Our grandfather had requested to be scattered on Nohrian territory, and we did what we had to in order to make it happen.” Subaki offered the folder towards Severa, but she was too busy glaring at her mother and barking for her to speak to notice, so he turned it towards O’wain, who grabbed it without hesitation. “But reasons came up for me to always need the paper handy, and so I continued updating it, much like someone else native to Nohr but living elsewhere would have to do.”

“Reasons like why you did this for me, right?” O’wain asked, opening the folder to see what was on top. He screamed in excitement when he saw whatever paper was the first one in the stack, and despite wanting to be paying attention to Subaki while he spoke Kjelle couldn’t help but focus on her friend instead. “It’s _perfect_ , thank you so much!”

While Subaki was accepting the thanks as if they hadn’t interrupted whatever he was talking about, O’wain was throwing the folder onto the floor in front of him and holding that top piece of paper up. It was then that Kjelle was able to get a proper look at it, and after getting past the reflective symbol in the middle of the paper she noticed something strange about what was written on it. “Okay, I get that it’s supposed to be a fake document, but why’s his name wrong on it?”

“Can you imagine walking into a heavily-secluded country trying to use fake papers with your real name on them? One look into a database and they’ll find that you’re not who you say you are and have you arrested or put to death. With a fake name, you’ll bypass that because if they can’t find you, then you must be some Nohrian who’s done nothing with your life.” Even though she’d just mentioned dying as a consequence of an illegal act, Cordelia didn’t seem bothered at all with what she’d said. “All of our names are faked on these papers, it’s just easier that way.”

“Mother, you better tell me there’s one for me,” Severa cut in, making grabbing motions towards the folder but being unsuccessful as Kjelle was taking it for herself, wanting to see how deep the rabbit hole went. “I know I can’t stay with O’wain, but you’re not staying either and you have one, so I want one too!”

Listening to her friend’s demands, Kjelle looked closely at the document that was now on top of the stack in the folder and shuddered. “Fake names or not, I don’t think this one would be meant for, uh, me based on how similar the name on it is to yours, Severa,” she said, picking the paper up with her fingertips and carefully handing it to her friend, who nearly ripped it away from her in her eagerness to see it for herself. “I don’t know, but I think you’d be more of a Selena than I would be.”

“So I could go to Nohr and pretend to be this person and no one would ever catch me lying?” There was a gleam in Severa’s eyes as she asked her question, but as they already were doing both adults ignored her, not wanting to address her or her interest in being included in the fake identity party. “I’ll have to keep that in mind for the future, in case I ever need to get out of Ylisse for some reason.”

“So Severa would be Selena if she went with us, but what does Kjelle get to be?” O’wain was still looking at his paper, but he knew that he needed to be aware of what the identity of the person he wanted as his partner-in-crime would be. He glanced at her for a moment, but she’d turned her attention away from the folder and whatever was to come next, now looking at Subaki once more. “Come on, Kay, you have to tell us!”

She shook her head, every fiber of her being telling her that playing along with this game was a bad idea. “I’m sorry, but I can’t until I know what everyone else’s identities are. It must be mighty difficult to mask a royal guard’s identity, and miss Cordelia’s a police officer so she’s probably got a lot of records to hide as well. What did you do to get you both safe passage into such a strict country?”

Blinking a couple times as he mentally processed the question, Subaki turned his paper so that the words on it could be read, instead of the picture on it reflecting light. “I added a ‘t’ to the beginning of my name, worked when I was a teenager and works even to this day.”

“And I’ve always gone with scrambling the letters of my name to make it look unrecognizable,” Cordelia said, also turning her paper so Kjelle could see that she was speaking the truth. “It’s not the prettiest of names, but it’s worked for me this long and would continue to work if I tried to enter Nohr again.”

Seeing that their disguises were as simple as they were gave her hope that hers would be something similar, but before she could bring herself to look and give in to the fact that there was an expectation for her to use this document sitting in front of her, she gestured towards O’wain and his gleeful expression hidden behind his paper. “What about you, you seem super pleased about whatever name you got. Did they, by chance, remove the apostrophe from your name that you hate so much?”

“Subaki has done something greater than that, he’s allowed for me to live out my wildest dreams with the stage name I’ve always desired!” If it wasn’t something necessary for him to do as he pleased, O’wain most likely would have thrown that paper up towards the ceiling in his excitement. “He took my request into account when putting this together, and once I begin my quest to find my dear cousin, I will assume the identity of the fearless and mysterious Odin Dark, a former countryman of Nohr coming back to reclaim who he once was! It’s, heh, something I’ve been thinking of as a backstory since I knew this happening was a possibility.”

“Getting that name was a lot simpler than you’d expect, you overdramatic child you. I’m glad I could be of—” Subaki immediately shut up when he heard the sound of his front door opening, which put everyone into a bit of a panic, with the illegal documents out in the open. He dived for the folder that Kjelle was pushing towards him, while everyone else holding a paper was trying to give it back to who it needed to be with for safekeeping. The panic seemed to be for nothing, after a female voice called out into the house from the entryway looking for Subaki himself, and he visibly loosened up. “—oh thank everything, it’s merely Hana coming to visit with everyone. You’ll love her, she’s…well, she’s definitely going to be of use for what we’re discussing.”

“You haven’t talked much about her recently, why has that been? She used to live with you, way back when, didn’t she? Did you two have a falling-out of some kind?” Cordelia’s questions went unanswered, as Subaki handed her the folder before standing up to go greet their visitor. She didn’t appreciate being ignored like she had been, but now that she was holding all the papers she didn’t let her feelings show too much. “While he’s taking care of that, I’m sorry that I’ll have to return home and spin some fabricated story about what happened to you, O’wain, but your mother would have my head if she found out I’d been partially responsible for you crossing borders illegally.”

“It’s all good, I’ll apologize to Mom myself when I get home, but who knows if I’ll need to by then, she might be over the moon when I bring Inigo back with me.” Shooting her that grin that he used to show everything was fine, O’wain let his happiness falter as he glanced over at Kjelle, who was shaking her head slowly at him. “Aw, come _on_ Kjelle, you know that this is the best way to get my family to finally realize I’m not cut from the same cloth as my father! I’ve got to do this, I’ve got the chance and I’m not giving it up!”

The corners of her mouth twitched as she resisted saying something to him about how he could prove to his family his worth in other ways. She knew that he really wanted to do this for them, bring home someone missing for so long, but at the same time she also knew that his plan was for her to be there with him. That wasn’t the problem, she’d go to the ends of the world with him if it meant they’d both be safe; the problem was that she was already out of the country without her parents knowing, and she didn’t want to imagine them finding out that she was considered a missing person because she’d stayed behind and given up her Ylissean life to help O’wain out. “I know what you’re thinking, and you should stop being such a goody-two-shoes about this,” Severa said, watching the resistance to speaking Kjelle was going through facially. “You’re going to break O’wain’s heart and crush his dreams into tiny pieces if you don’t stay.”

“I know, but why don’t I get to do what I want here?” The words fell out of her mouth before she’d really thought about the implications of saying them, but hearing the gasps of shock come from everyone who’d heard her let Kjelle know that none of them had really been considering that she wouldn’t go along with the plan. “I’m here without my family knowing where I am, as far as they’re concerned I’m exactly where we agreed I’d be, and because they’ve isolated themselves so far from basically everyone we know, the only way they’ll find out I’m here is if one of us tells them. And I’m expected to just leave them in the dark forever and abandon my life I’ve built already without them, which is something that was kinda dropped on me without warning? Yeah, uh, I think I should get an opinion on what I do with my life.”

She was trying her best to keep calm, but the way everyone seemed hurt by the fact that she was being so resistant to everything was making her resilience that much harder to maintain. Cordelia saw this and after taking a couple moments to look at the young woman and take note of every aspect of her body language, she made her move. “Kjelle, I promise you that if you stay behind to assist O’wain with what he needs to do, your parents will never find out. We will get you a phone you can call them with, we’ll pull strings to get the numbers situated so that they don’t know you’re in a foreign country, but by all means you’re assuming this is going to be a long-term thing, when really it shouldn’t take long at all.”

“Seeing as Inigo’s been missing for ten years, it could be long-term,” O’wain reminded, before covering his mouth and apologizing for making such an obvious statement.

“That’s correct, but if Subaki is to be believed, finding him is much easier than we’ve expected.” At mentioning her cousin’s name, Cordelia turned to look towards where she’d last seen him go, but she couldn’t even hear his potential conversation with his visitor. She turned back to the younger people, softly tutting as she did, telling them, “I wouldn’t be surprised if he forgot that he had some royal duty to attend to today and Hana was here to remind him of it. That would be unusual for him, but given his distractions as of late it would make some amount of sense.”

Taking a look at the folder that was still in Cordelia’s hands, Kjelle couldn’t quite bring herself to make any comment on what she’d just heard. She was still thinking about what she was being expected to do and about how she didn’t know if she wanted to or not. Her life was fine the way it was, living with her friend’s family with her parents’ permission and understanding that she was hours away (even though she was old enough to be completely on her own). There wasn’t much of a call to go out and do crazy things where they couldn’t swoop in and save her if she really needed it, but at the same time would anyone be able to save O’wain if he was by himself and something were to happen? If she were there to protect him and keep him company, the chances of anything going catastrophically wrong would be diminished to a minimal level, and if something was still to happen she’d be able to report it back to people who loved him.

Even with that idea of her protecting him in mind, she couldn’t convince herself that it was in her best interest to stay in Hoshido and—actually, there was a point that she realized she needed to bring up before she could make any decision. “Is anyone going to tell me why we’re dealing with fake paperwork for Nohr when we’re talking about staying in Hoshido?”

“Yes, I suppose that would be necessary to know, wouldn’t it?” Giving a single laugh as she opened the folder and grabbed the paper that was on the bottom of the stack, Cordelia raised it so that everyone could see it and what it said. It wasn’t a citizenship document like the other ones, but rather a crudely-written letter that had an address at the top that was highlighted as being from Nohr. “I’m not familiar with anything within their country, so I don’t know where this is or what it means, but Subaki let me know that this residence received this in the mail one day, and it was signed as being from Inigo himself, so the address may be where he’s located.”

“And that’s why I knew I was going to stay behind when we came, since we were coming on the trip anyway when that showed up,” O’wain added, staring at the writing and smiling when he saw the signature at the bottom. “Miss Cordelia didn’t have to tell me she’d gotten that, but I confided in her that I, you know, was looking for adventure in my life as well as a way to make my mother proud, and she dropped that information on me. The rest, obviously, is history, and we’re going to use this to our advantage.”

“Yawn, can you say _bor­-_ ring?” Severa yawned, stretching her arms to show just how bored she claimed to be. “I think it sounds better when you say that you grilled darling Mother until she cracked and told you about that letter, makes it sound like you really forced the issue, rather than her suggesting it to you.”

“N-no one asked you for your opinion!” O’wain looked at Severa, narrowing his eyes in her direction until she stopped pretending to be bored and went back to just watching what everyone else was doing with interest. When that happened, he turned to Kjelle with determination in his gaze, locking eyes with her as she braced herself for what was to come. “I really want you to do this with me, Kay. Not even want, honestly, it’s more like a need at this point. I need you to stay here and go to Nohr with me so we can find Inigo and take him home for my family.”

“If he’s writing letters he can’t be a prisoner of any kind, but at the same time, if he’s free why hasn’t he returned on his own?” They were making this harder than it needed to be, something that Kjelle did not appreciate in the slightest. But her question stumped them all, and even when Subaki came back with some excuse that Hana had stopped by to see what was happening but couldn’t stay to chat, no one had any way of answering what she’d asked.

As she soon found out, that wasn’t because there wasn’t an available answer, but because those who did know knew that the truth would impact her decision more than anyone’s lie could. It came the following morning, after one last hurrah of a night together on their trip, and after everyone (including O’wain, begrudgingly) had packed their belongings and they were getting ready to ride with Subaki over to the airport. Someone had remarked that they were leaving awfully early for having an afternoon flight, and at hearing those words Subaki broke into explaining that they weren’t going to the airport right away, that they had one stop to make before they got there.

It was a few minutes away by foot, but driving over to the other house within the royal neighborhood meant that they had the car with them when it was really time to leave. The exterior was identical to Subaki’s home, and as they all stood outside waiting to be let in not a single person had the courage to ask where they were, everyone knowing that doing so could invite Subaki to launch into some long explanation. When the door opened, a woman stood on the other side, with long brown hair kept out of her face with a simple headband. She smiled at everyone but didn’t open the door more than a crack even as she spoke to them. “I knew you’d keep your word about bringing them,” she said, the voice registering as the one from the visitor the day before. “I just didn’t think it would be all of them.”

“We’re still having a bit of difficulty getting someone to agree to staying, so going along with the original plan would mean her not being present for this. Apologies for not informing you that it would be all of them, Hana, if it’s an issue we can always do this another way.” Bowing in respect of his friend, Subaki stood tall after a moment as he watched the woman on the other side of the door consider his words before playfully mimicking what he’d just done, flipping her hair back once she’d finished bowing. “I’m taking that as there not being a problem, so let’s address why this meeting is happening, shall we?”

“Because I know where he is, isn’t that what I’m supposed to say right now?” Hana’s last couple of words were overshadowed by O’wain loudly yelling in surprise at what he’d heard, and she was stunned by his reaction, looking at Subaki with raised eyebrows. “Is he the one that’s related to Inigo? Is that why he’s acting like that?”

“This whole time my uncle and aunt and cousin haven’t know where he is, and have acted like no one in the world knew, but there was someone all along?” Not even caring that he was being rude and talking over Subaki as he tried giving Hana the answer she was looking for, O’wain grabbed Kjelle by the shoulders and shook her. “Kay, Kay, did you hear her? She knows where he is! You can stay and help me with finding him and—”

She bucked him off and stopped him before he could finish his suggestion. “I heard her, O’wain, it’s not like you’re the only one she was talking to. I just…don’t know if her word means I should stay, that’s still a huge decision for me to make. Give me time.”

“—time? Still? There’s not exactly a lot of time left for you to decide, you know.” It was clear that O’wain was getting antsy, but forcing her choice wasn’t going to help matters at all, something that he was reminded by everyone else standing on their side of the door. Even with their gentle reminders that he needed to be patient, he was still reaching to grab Kjelle again, something she noticed and chose to jump off the front step to avoid. “Where are you going? You can’t just leave!”

“I said I need time to think about what I’m going to do, I’m finding somewhere quiet to think, damn it!” Her response left everyone in silence for a moment, watching her as she took careful steps through a beautiful yard to find somewhere secluded to make her final decision on what had been asked of her.

There was one voice that broke through the silence, however, and as it spoke it made her stop where she stood and turn back around without hesitation. “There’s a personal reason for why I’d like for him to come back to me before returning to his real home,” Hana said, the door closing tighter on her for a moment. “When he left, he said he’d come back after exploring the world a bit more, because it wasn’t going to be safe if I went with him. He has to come back to properly meet someone, since he left her with me when she was days old.” It was at about the time that Kjelle came back to that front step that Hana properly opened the door and standing beside her, hugging a toy close to her face, was a little girl who looked like a perfect replica of old pictures they’d all seen at message parties back in Ylisse.

* * *

The whole rescue mission was no longer fueled by one young adult wanting to make his family appreciate his worth by bringing home someone who’d been missing for a decade. That was still a large part of why it was happening, but now that they all knew that there was more involved than just that, it became easier for Kjelle to decide that, despite not wanting to get involved in the whole mess, she needed to be there to support her friend through it all. The parting of those returning to Ylisse and those staying behind had many tears shed, as well as a promise made between them all that a return home would happen in the future, no matter what. It took a while to get Severa to stop clinging to her best friend even with that promise hanging over them all, as she was going from having someone always there with her to no one but her parents once more, but after they were in Subaki’s car and on their way back home the time came to further discuss what was going to happen.

Inside O’wain’s bag was the faked paperwork to get into Nohr, something he’d packed with him so that he had it in case this was the final decision made. After entering Hana’s house and getting to meet the little girl with her (her name was Soleil and she was incredibly shy, to the point that she didn’t say a word around the strangers the whole time they were there), he opened his suitcase and pulled out the file, removing two of the papers and handing the rest of them to Hana for safekeeping. “Here, Kay, I know you haven’t looked at yours yet so do you want to do that now or later?” he asked, offering her the paper she’d tried so hard to resist the call of.

“I guess there’s no time like the present,” she replied, taking it from his hand and flipping it over to look at what kind of fake name she’d been given. Her eyebrows furrowed as she looked at it, a feeling of disgust rising within her, but she didn’t say a word about how she felt because it seemed inappropriate to make that comment after the point of no return. The name that she’d been assigned wasn’t the worst, and it might’ve been a good name for someone out in the world, but she had an attachment to her whole name as well as her nickname, and this name she was now expected to use seemed like it was a corruption of part of the name she already had.

O’wain saw her reaction and chose not to address it, instead looking immediately to Hana with a slightly-opened mouth, his words at the back of his throat ready to be spoken as soon as he knew he was ready. “So, uh, I know you’re being serious about wanting him back here, but if he matters so much to you, why did he leave you two in the first place? I know I was young the last time I saw Inigo, but ‘abandoning a child’ doesn’t sound like something he’d ever do.”

“It wasn’t abandoning, he’d been building his plan with Subaki and me for a long time before he acted on it, but it was all just poor timing. First it was the closure of the border for nearly a year, after the murder of Queen Mikoto, but after the border reopened we expected his return and it never came.” Hana fanned herself with the folder she was holding, not because she was upset but rather because the interior of the house was warm, something the others had noticed as well. “Then the letters started, with half of a return address and a strict message to not reply to them under any circumstances. I know he wants to come back to us, he’d talked about how he was going to go to Nohr first, then take Soleil and me to Ylisse to meet his family, but if he wants to come back as badly as he claims, why hasn’t he?”

She paused what she was doing to take a look between the pair of teenagers that had risen to the call of finding who she was so desperately looking for, nodding in approval after a moment of looking at them. “Even though it’s very difficult given that we’re Hoshidan guards and our behavior is strictly monitored, Subaki and I have managed to piece together some of Inigo’s story, and once he comes back we’re going to lay everything we have out for you both, so you know what you’re getting into.”

“Isn’t it a bit late for us to be learning what we’re getting into?” O’wain sounded concerned, almost as if he hadn’t once thought about the possibility that he was going to be used to do something more than he was expecting. “We can’t go back to Ylisse, they’re already going and we’re still here, but we’re not going to just stick around here in Hoshido with you. I told myself I was bringing my cousin home, I’m not going back on that word.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not expecting you to! There’s just something interesting about where his letters are coming from, and it’s something you need to know before you get involved. It’s the reason why we haven’t taken action ourselves, if I’m being honest, because I’d love to bring him home on my own if I could.” The sigh that ended Hana’s statement showed how much emotional investment she had in the situation, and it was almost enough to make anyone want to help her out anyway.

However, one of the people she was talking to had her mind on other things, and the way she was delivering news wasn’t doing much to faze her. Kjelle’s mind was completely on her fake document in her hand, and how if she needed one to participate then anyone else doing the same would’ve also needed one. “Sorry to bring this up, but if we’re not supposed to cross into Nohr without being a Nohrian citizen, what was O’wain’s cousin doing crossing over anyway? Did he have a death wish, being Ylissean with faked papers and going on his own?”

“He was just going for a quick look at what was on the other side of the border, after we’d crossed Hoshido together and seen everything my country has to offer. Subaki had done it many times without issue, so Inigo thought he could get lucky and do the same.” Beginning to fan herself again, Hana’s eyes locked on Kjelle and her extreme focus on what she was holding in her hand. “You’re not going to experience the same problem he did when he crossed the border, there’s no way the king will be killed when he’s done nothing wrong and we’re in a time of relative peace.”

“Getting trapped somewhere he shouldn’t be with serious consequences, I think I’ve heard stories about that happening before this,” O’wain said with a soft laugh, his eyes shifting down towards the floor. “I mean, I know I have heard stories of that before that he was there for, but it wasn’t that he wasn’t supposed to be where he was, it was other people that were there. Happened before I was born, but Mom’s told me about it a few times.”

Breaking her concentration on what she was holding to give her friend an almost disgusted look, Kjelle didn’t stop herself from telling him, “Of all the things to start talking about right now, you’re going to bring up some story that both of our parents have made sure we knew very well? Are you kidding me?” His response was a shrug and an apology, but the damage had already been done and her mind had shifted to thinking about her parents and how they’d told that very story to her. It wasn’t exactly applicable to what they now knew had happened to Inigo, but the base of the two stories was the same: people going somewhere they shouldn’t be and suffering for it by being stuck where they went. “Okay, well, if he’s over the border and there’s no chance of us getting trapped there as well, I guess I can suck it up and pretend to be this person I’m not to help out.”

She was clearly referring to the name she’d been assigned on her paper, but when O’wain tried to sneak a glance at it she turned it away from him. “I’m so glad you’re warming up to this idea, Kay, I was worried that you’d be complaining the whole time and being rude about how you wanted to go home and not be with me looking for my cousin.” He was taking her rejection in stride, yet it was clear with how he continued trying to get even a peek at what her paper said he wasn’t fully done with wanting to find out what name he’d be calling her. “So I guess now we wait for Subaki to get back and discuss what we’re going to do from there, right?”

“Yes, he’s the one who’s done so much of the legwork on this, it’s only polite to include him. Now while we wait for him to return, I think I’ll take care of some stuff, so the two of you just make yourselves at home!” Excusing herself to go hunt down wherever her daughter had hidden in the room, Hana turned her back on the pair and left them to their own devices for however long it would take until they could continue their conversation.

The moment she wasn’t in the room any longer, O’wain set his paper down before he clapped his hands together in front of his face, only to separate them and begin reaching for Kjelle’s, which she tugged away from him. “This is only going to make the transition into using the new name harder, Kay,” he reminded her, making another attempt at a grab that was denied like every one before it. “I mean, I’ll still be calling you Kay, since that’s kind of the thing I’ve done since we met and I tripped over your name a few dozen times, but no one else is allowed to do that. They have to use what the paper says.”

“You won’t still be calling me Kay, it won’t make any sense if you do.” A feeling of anger had built up in the back of Kjelle’s mind, as she’d gotten to thinking about the name she was given without her consent. “Someone’ll hear you say it and they’ll ask you if you’re dumb because my name is nothing _close_ to that.”

“If you just let me see it, I’d know that for myself.” Once again he was trying to get the paper, and she sighed, shoving it towards him so he could taste that victory even though it was handed straight to him. Upon flipping the paper over and looking at what was printed on the side of the Nohrian crest, his lips pursed together and he found himself staring at it in silence, taking in what he was reading fully before commenting. “I see that your designated persona isn’t going to be as fun as mine will be, but nothing could top Odin Dark,” he said, reading the paper again to make sure he had what it said completely in order, not mixing up letters or words. “At the same time, however, I can sense that the name itself came from someone most likely mishearing what your name really is.”

“I’m not using this, it’s stupid and pointless and—” she paused mid-sentence when the biggest reason for why she was taking offense to the name crossed her mind, something she didn’t want to tell O’wain because he was so happy with getting the opportunity to pretend to have a different name. Her name had been specially picked and given to her by her parents, it was a reminder of how much they loved her and that she belonged to them, and she had no desire to erase that from her life. “—I just don’t want to use something as bad as this. I’m not going to be this person, I’m just going to keep being Kjelle.”

It was a point she wasn’t going to back down on, because there was nothing in the world that was going to strip her parents away from her without her permission. Yet when Subaki got back to the house alone, looking a bit teary-eyed from having sent his cousin and her daughter back to where they belonged, he came in with the full force of getting her to accept what changes she needed to make. “Starting today, you will both become the Nohrian citizens your papers say you are,” he told them, before breaking into a long speech about key points to playing those roles, things they needed to know, customs they needed to start respecting, things of that nature.

Curiously, he avoided any and all mention of politics, the closest he got being when he mentioned that things were tense between the countries, but that there wasn’t any active fighting. “You keep mentioning industry a lot as you’re talking,” O’wain pointed out, having heard many things about creation and jobs in Subaki’s explanation, “but you’re not really talking about why the countries don’t get along. Does their king or queen just not like Hoshido or something?”

“It’s quite complicated,” he replied, looking to Hana for any assistance in how to approach what had been asked of him. “For starters, they do not have a monarchy of any sort, but rather an elected leader that, ahem, doesn’t do his own job.”

“He’s a figurehead,” she added for clarification, biting her lip after she’d spoken. “The head of the biggest industry complex in Nohr is really in charge, barking orders to anyone who listens. And that’s important for you both to know, given that you’ll be going right into the heart of that mess to find Inigo.”

A moment of silence took hold there in the room, as the two who knew the dangers of what they were enabling looked at the two who were going to be participating, waiting to see their reaction. “I believe we should explain why that is,” Subaki decided, after seeing that neither of them really had a reaction. He pulled out his phone and handed it to Hana, giving her a request to retrieve some video off of it while he continued talking. “In the most basic of senses, their elected leader is in fact a figurehead, but that is only because the man wielding the power is so disliked by the people that he would be removed from the position if he was given it. His son, however, is quite admired by the Nohrian people, and it is with that son that the whole problem seems to lie.”

Once again he looked to the two in case they had anything of their own to say, but all he was getting was expressions that were curious about what else was going to be told to them. “Before we can really tell you about him, you need to be aware of the Garon Corporation as a whole, because they’re who you’ll be dealing with primarily.” Closing his eyes for a moment, and lifting a hand to use to gesture with as he gave rankings, Subaki gave his quick explanation of the company in the briefest way he could. “Aside from the head of the company, a despicable old man who’s preparing for replacement, there are four children, all of whom live together at what everyone knows as the Krakenburg Complex, similar to the housing district of our royalty here but much more secluded. The oldest of those children, he’s about the same age as our former prince is, and the youngest is roughly Severa’s age, with the other two falling somewhere in between. As is to be expected, the oldest son is the one who’s going to be taking his father’s place as head of the company when he retires, and is expected to run for the political office his father holds in the palm of his hand.”

“Pardon the interruption, but I found the video,” Hana said, turning the phone so that O’wain and Kjelle could see the screen. “This was a televised meeting between our king and their political leader, but what’s most important is something in the background.” She pressed for it to play and let it run for a few seconds, before pausing it and pointing towards a set of figures positioned behind the Nohrian man at the podium. “That would be their so-called prince Xander, watching a political meeting to know what will be expected of him in due time, but next to him…”

O’wain leaned in as close as he could to the screen before swallowing down hard. “That’s Inigo, I know that’s him. What’s he doing messing around in Nohrian politics?”

“That would be his reason for not returning here to Hoshido after the border reopened, getting sucked into the close quarters at the Complex, or at least that’s what we can assume has happened.” Subaki took back his phone from Hana, closing the video without even looking at it for himself. “There’s stories about what happens at the Complex, involving some of Garon’s children and the people they invite inside with them, but it seems easy enough to infiltrate their walls and convince him to leave with you.”

“Wait, how can you be so sure that he’s living there with them?” Kjelle asked, not knowing if the person in the video was really Inigo or not but trusting in O’wain’s reaction to it. “Maybe he’s just gotten into politics for himself and that’s why he was there.”

“The letters have all had the Krakenburg name on them, so he’s definitely living within the Complex,” Hana answered immediately, knowing that she needed to shoot down the hope that this wouldn’t involve the place they were warning about. “I’m willing to guess that they won’t let him leave without reason, and since he can’t reveal he’s not from Nohr he doesn’t exactly have a reason to go. We just want him home, he’s had enough time there that I know they can find someone to replace him.”

“We’ll bring him back, I promise!” O’wain spoke with confidence, and he really wanted to mean what he was saying, but he knew he was agreeing to what could easily become an impossible task.

“If you don’t succeed, we’ll find it in our hearts to forgive you.” Punctuating his words with a laugh, Subaki took a good, long look at the two young adults who’d agreed to do this task and smiled. “The last time I sent someone to Nohr, I did it because he wanted to see the world. Now I’m sending you both to rescue him and fix one of my rare wrongs. It fills me with a certain kind of pride to know that I’ve got two kids I can trust working on this.”

“Remember that you’re not just doing this for yourself and your family anymore, O’wain, but for me and Soleil as well.” Hana’s words held more power than Subaki’s did, and with good reason, but hearing her talk about how something he’d wanted to do to prove himself to his family now had a second meaning to it made him wish, if even just temporarily, that it wasn’t the case. Bringing Inigo back to Hoshido left them with the possibility that he wouldn’t want to leave there and go back to Ylisse, even though that had been the plan from the start. Was that risk going to be worth it?

That was a question he knew he had time to think on, because it wasn’t as if they were leaving for Nohr that day, or even that week. Before they could set out, they needed to make sure that Cordelia and Severa had made it back safely, and that they knew the status of any anger or sadness that they hadn’t gone home with them. Cordelia’s calls to Subaki about how she was having to give long, tear-filled apologies about how she couldn’t convince them to get on the return flight and that they were okay wherever they were brought conflicting feelings into their hearts, but they’d come to terms with what they were doing. Not even hearing about his mother being inconsolable was enough to make O’wain regret his choice, and Kjelle hadn’t had to hear a word about her parents so she wasn’t too bothered.

When the morning came for them to pack their bags one last time and set off for the Nohrian border, Subaki had one final piece of the puzzle to provide them with. “Much like the rest of us, Inigo has a false name that he may still be going by when you meet him. Do not expect to hear people speak of him in a way familiar to your ears, be listening to anyone speaking of a man named Laslow.” Delivering that information had been intentionally saved for right before departure, so it would be fresh in their minds, yet he did worry that they’d forget it as soon as they’d gone through with crossing the border.

The last things they said (aside from their goodbyes and promises to be safe and return as quickly as possible) were confirming the roles they had been assigned to play. O’wain was still incredibly eager to begin acting like some cryptic diplomat, and Kjelle wasn’t sure how she was going to take her role but based on how she was dressed, she knew playing diplomatically wasn’t going to fly. Little did she know that her job and position would be one of the first things questioned upon walking up to the border check station, Subaki having dropped them off a far distance from the crossing so that he wouldn’t be caught mingling with them. “I need to see your papers,” an armed guard said immediately upon them approaching the closed gates. “There’s a high-profile crossing today and we’re doing total identification checks. Hand them over.”

This came as little surprise, as they’d already been told that the Nohrians would check their papers completely, but when the guard took them from them with more force than was necessary, it felt like he was already aware they were being deceitful. “Uh-huh, what kind of business had the two of you here in Hoshido?” the guard asked, his eyes carefully scanning the documents for any trace of them being faked. “Most specifically you, Mister Dark.”

“I, er, was over here on some business things, you know how industry is always advancing and whatnot,” O’wain replied, putting on a formal voice but sounding like he knew exactly nothing about what he was saying. “Had to scope out what the Hoshidan version of my company is doing, just so I know how to crush their profits in the future.”

It was very clear that the guard didn’t buy a word he’d just heard but he shrugged it off, flipping to the other paper. “And you, Miss Ella, what were you across the border for? Wasn’t aware there were any bouts this week, I would’ve watched them if they were televised. You doing some practicing in that getup?”

“The tournament was a friendly one, it was by luck that the invitation got to me in Nohr but the Hoshidans putting it together were happy to have me.” Kjelle was content with the faked backstory Subaki had told her that she’d be representing, but she kind of wished that she really had been taking part in some fighting ring of any sort. The last time she’d been in a match had been while she was in school, the only girl on the wrestling team that ended the season with a positive win-loss record. There was one little concern she had with how the guard had addressed her, and that was him using the last name she’d been gifted—she’d slowly psyched herself up to getting used to the first name, and hearing the last name had thrown a curveball in her direction. “I came close to winning, but a draw is better than losing when nothing’s at stake.”

“You must be getting soft, that’s no way a Nohrian thinks.” The guard handed back the papers before turning to wave towards the person controlling the gate. “At any rate, it’s good to have you both returning safe and sound, far too often we lose people of our great country because they find Hoshido to be a ‘better’ place. Nohr is supreme in every way possible, we want to keep our citizens to ourselves.”

As the gates opened, the pair shared a look amongst them, a feeling of uncertainty taking hold in both of their minds. That man was spewing propaganda at them before they’d even crossed the border; what did that mean for them once they were properly inside Nohr? If that was the standard, they weren’t going to be able to pretend to be people they weren’t forever, not when the guard could tell so much about who they were supposed to be just with the codes and notes on their fake citizenship documents. He escorted them over, making sure that he was back on the Hoshido side before the gates closed, locking them into Nohr for the foreseeable future.

There was a guard waiting for them on that side, a clipboard in hand and eyes not even paying attention to the fact that there were people approaching. “I take it you are Dark and Ella?” she asked, her voice rather cheerful for being some who didn’t care she was talking to anyone in particular. O’wain gave her a grunt in response and she pointed a finger in the direction of what looked to be a bus station. “The shuttle to Windmere will be here shortly, we are waiting on our special passengers before its arrival.”

“Ah yes, the shuttle, thank you ma’am,” O’wain said, giving the guard a bow despite her not looking at him. After he and Kjelle had started walking towards the bench she’d directed them to, he leaned in closer to his friend and whispered, “I had no idea there was a shuttle, are there really enough travelers into Nohr on a normal day for there to be one? And what’s with this ‘high-profile’ crossing and these ‘special passengers’? We’ve been in Hoshido for how long and not heard a word about anyone from Nohr being around, they’ve got to be talking about someone else with fake papers.”

“Well, since we’re waiting for this shuttle, I guess we’ll find out when they get here.” It wasn’t like they would recognize almost anyone from Nohr by sight, as they’d only seen a couple people that they needed to be aware of, but that was fine by Kjelle. She was already wary about the fact that they were on the list for the shuttle, although that could have easily been Subaki’s doing as a favor to them, but now that they were going to be riding into the capital city with some people who may have been important, she was glad she didn’t know who it was going to be. The less chance of being caught for lying about who they were, the better, and if that meant completely ignoring someone of importance and chalking it up to “not wanting to bother them”, that was what she was going to do.

They found themselves sitting there for a long while, even after a large bus that had definitely seen better days pulled up in front of them. The guard with the clipboard had moved to standing by the opened door of the bus, escorting the few people who were coming to the border off before taking the position of blocking the door completely. Her eyes weren’t on what she had in front of her anymore, but rather were glued to the gates, waiting for them to open for someone else entering the country. She made no small talk, not even acting like she knew there were people sitting there in the sweltering heat that could have been on the bus instead.

That changed when the gates came creaking open and she stepped aside. “Dark, Ella, you’re sitting in the second-to-last row of seats, one on each side of the aisle. Failure to comply with these directions can, as you know, lead to strict consequences so choose your seats wisely.” Her words were said quickly, almost as if she was trying to rush them onto the shuttle before the other guests came over the border, but with a vague threat over their heads they had no reason to linger around. The seats looked just as worn and run-down as the exterior of the bus did, and the driver didn’t seem to notice that they’d come on, blasting his radio news channel at full volume for them to listen to. By the front door was a stack of pamphlets that O’wain quickly took one of before shuffling back to where they’d been told to sit.

The guard’s warning made sense when they saw the condition of the seats they’d been assigned, with there being only one that was able to be sat in on each side. “Guess the consequences we’d face if we didn’t listen would be not having a seat,” Kjelle remarked as she sat down, O’wain on the opposite side of the aisle as directed. “Now we just sit back and relax until this thing stops, then we get to business, right?”

“Definitely,” he agreed, taking a look at the cover of the pamphlet he’d snagged. “Looks like this is a map of Windmere, so we’ll have something leading us where to go. Subaki and Hana said we’ll be looking for the Krakenburg Complex, so maybe—”

“Don’t open that map on the bus and make it super obvious we don’t know where we’re going!” she hissed, right as he’d begun unfolding the map. “We can do that once we’re somewhere we know is safe, which isn’t here.”

“—you know what, you’re right.” He folded it back up and tucked it into the front pocket of his suitcase, which he had sitting where the seat next to him should have been. “There, it’s with my proof of citizenship, so we know I won’t lose it.” After giving him an accepting nod and leaning into her seat to get comfortable, Kjelle glanced to her own bag, which she regretted to have brought with her in the first place. She had a strong attachment to the backpack, which she’d had since before she moved to Ylisse, but it was something that clearly belonged to a foreigner, not someone of Nohr, a fact made all the more obvious by the patch on its front courtesy of the Feroxi police force. If someone were to see that and question it, would she be able to manage to lie to them about where she got it, or would she tell them the truth?


	3. New Nohrian Lives

Whatever the answer to that question would be, sitting on the shuttle bus waiting to embark on this life-changing adventure was not the place to think about it. This was especially true when two ladies also boarded, one of them looking rather young while the other seemed to be focused solely on helping her to her seat. When they came on, the driver turned down his radio show and greeted them with a small bow, the smaller lady curtseying in response and getting gently scolded by the other for doing so. They came towards the back of the bus but stopped a few rows ahead of where they were sitting, taking their seats on the same side of the aisle, so that the two of them and O’wain were on one side, and Kjelle was by herself on the other. After they’d sat down, the doors seemed to close and the bus began moving without anything being said to the passengers.

“Those are the special passengers?” O’wain asked under his breath, looking at the ladies as well as he could from being rows behind them. “Maybe they’re young kids on a school trip? The one looks like she’s maybe Severa’s age, it’s possible, don’t you think?” That comparison clicked in Kjelle’s head but she couldn’t tell why that was, even though the idea of someone being referred to as being their friend’s age felt familiar. “Not like we can ask them, we’ve got to pretend like we know who they are.”

“Should be easy enough, they look like they’ll keep to themselves.” Now fiddling with how to recline her chair to make the ride more comfortable (something she quickly found she wasn’t going to be able to do), Kjelle’s eyes were focusing up towards the driver and not trying to pay the other passengers any attention. That changed when the bigger of the two got up from her seat and came back towards where they were sitting, carrying with her a large box of some sort. It seemed like a friendly gesture, but the woman that was standing in the aisle between them was standing there without saying a word, prompting Kjelle to take that leap and ask her if she needed anything.

“I don’t need anything, but it doesn’t look like the two of you brought anything to eat with you, and this ride’s mighty long. You’ll find yourself starving by the five-hour mark, and that’s barely halfway!” The woman’s laugh was harsh yet comforting, something that initially reminded Kjelle of her mother’s laugh but she couldn’t dwell on that when interacting with some stranger. “I’ve got an extra tray of food here if the two of you want it, since Elise and I have our own and it’s better to share than gorge ourselves on the ride.”

“We’ll take it off your hands if you’re really offering,” O’wain said, extending a hand to take the box from the woman, which she was happy to pass off to him. “Thank you, I guess we must’ve forgotten how long this ride was. Took it overnight last time, you know, much more efficient with time that way.” Based on how the woman blankly smiled at him, he couldn’t tell if she’d bought what he’d just said or was mentally processing how to call out his bluff, but she didn’t say a word so he figured he was in the good. “Thank you, and thanks to your friend Elise as well.”

“Friend? Oh no, you’ve got it wrong, I’m working so she’s my liege right now, if this wasn’t during work time she’d be my friend.” The woman turned her head to look up at where her companion was still sitting, her face pressed against the window looking out at the Nohrian landscape. “I suppose Elise isn’t really in the news so you wouldn’t know about her guard situation, which is a good thing, but I can’t believe you’d say she’s my friend.”

At once, Kjelle realized why the comparison between the other woman and Severa had hit her so hard, and that was because it was a comparison that Subaki had made when talking about the children of the man in charge of the big corporation in Nohr. Her eyes went wide as she glanced over at O’wain, still unaware of who they were on the bus with, before she figured she needed to address the woman for herself. “What’s such an important lady like Elise doing crossing the border into Hoshido? I get she has a guard with her, but wouldn’t that cause trouble?”

“Not even a little bit, compared to her siblings Elise is like a breath of fresh air, and the Hoshidan people love her almost as much as they love their own royals.” The woman laughed, her attention coming back to O’wain and Kjelle. “It’s a shame that we have to come back today instead of tomorrow as planned, but events back home forced our hand. I wish we could’ve at least stayed until tonight for the judging of the food-making competition, and I know Elise wanted to see who won the awards for best flowers, but that’s life.”

“I hadn’t known there was a flower festival of any sort happening while we were there for our own personal matters,” Kjelle said, a true statement no matter how anyone looked at it. “Must’ve been a fun time to be there, even if you didn’t see it to the end.”

The woman nodded, before taking a seat in the chair directly in front of Kjelle, turning around backwards so she could face her without having to stand on the shakily-moving bus. “We’ve gone the past couple years, this is the first time Elise and I came without any of her siblings though, so it was a nice change of pace. I love that girl, I’m glad I get to be her partner on these sorts of things.” Even with saying that, she seemed to have no qualms with abandoning Elise to come sit further back in the bus, something that Kjelle wanted to point out but thought better of simply because she now knew what this girl’s role was in Nohr. If anything, she wanted to be on the good side of these people, because she and O’wain needed to get access to somewhere it seemed they lived.

Over the course of the next hour or so of their ride, they got into the middle of a rather serious conversation, just chatting about Nohr and what it was like compared to Hoshido. The woman, her name was Effie (something she said when she was recounting a thing Elise had said to her, otherwise she might have never let them know what her name was), she was definitely unaware that the people she was speaking with weren’t actually Nohrian and were making things up as they went. She’d reference places by name and they’d act like they’d heard of them all their lives, when really her mentioning them was their first time hearing about them.

It seemed like she was really trying to get to know them even though they’d boarded the bus as complete strangers, and there had to be some reason for why she was so insistent on speaking to them rather than talking to the person she’d come on with. “You know, I’ve been doing a lot of the directing here,” Effie admitted after wrapping up an in-depth analysis of some of her favorite restaurants in the capital city, with the others more or less just nodding along with slight interest. “Why don’t the two of you get to telling me a thing or two about you? I don’t even know what your names are, you know.”

“That’s an easy request,” O’wain replied, before his follow-up words caught in the back of his throat. He had to cough to clear the lump that had formed before he spoke again, Effie watching him for what he had to say. “My name’s Odin, it’s kind of amazing you’ve never heard of me given that I’m working on starting a business model in the same vein as the company Elise’s father runs. That’s a huge inspiration for me, and I’d kill to be even half as successful as the company someday.”

“I wouldn’t let anyone hear you say that, from what I understand mister Garon is pretty insistent that his company be the best, any imitators beware.” Shaking a finger at O’wain for what he’d said, Effie paused her movement and turned to make sure Elise wasn’t paying attention to what was going on before she continued, her voice a gravelly low that was hard to hear over the sound of tires on the road. “But if I’m being honest, anyone running a big corporation would be better than that man. Good luck on your endeavor, maybe when Xander takes control he’ll be more lenient on the competition side.”

O’wain visibly looked panicked that he’d happened to make some claim that could’ve cost him his life had his audience been anyone else, but he accepted Effie’s wishing of luck with a smile and all eyes turned to Kjelle. “I, uh, think it’s pretty obvious what I do with my life,” she said, flexing an arm to show some of her toned muscles, something she was thankful to have kept working on for so long. “I’m one of those wannabe wrestlers trying to make it into the big times, but it doesn’t seem like Nohr’s really the place for that, since I keep getting invited to tournaments in Hoshido.”

“You play around on the underground circuit though, don’t you?” Effie asked, mirroring what Kjelle had done by flexing her own arm and showing off even larger muscles without much effort. “Trust me, while there’s not much in the way of organized wrestling, if you know where to look you can find it. In fact, there’s a little dojo around the corner from the Complex that I could show you sometime, Arthur and I go there all the—oh dear, you don’t know who Arthur is, do you?” Having distracted herself within her own statement, Effie broke into another explanation about something that was only building their understanding of the corner of Nohr they were entering more, and when she was finished she apologized for taking control again and offered the floor back up to Kjelle.

Instead of doing what she should have done and acted like nothing had happened, going right back to talking, Kjelle took a moment to look at Effie and the kindness in her eyes, thanking everything that this woman was being so open with them without any chance of suspicion. “Going to that dojo with you sounds like it’d be a good time, if we ever end up in that area of town. Windmere’s a big place, and if you live in the most secluded part of town then there’s probably little chance that our paths will cross, right?”

“I’ll make sure it happens, if that’s fine with you.” Effie’s eyes had brightened at the idea of actually getting to spend more time with one of these two people she’d just met, and she grinned at Kjelle. “It’s not that hard to get out of my responsibilities when Elise does nothing to be concerned about. Arthur and I have it pretty easy having to watch her all the time.” She reached to grab Kjelle’s hand to hold it tightly, but when her fingers touched the back of her hand she awkwardly laughed, saying, “I, uh, might need a name to tell them to be on the lookout for. Can’t give them Odin’s name, they’ll expect it to be him showing up, and a scrawny man like him doesn’t have much of a place there.”

“Right, I guess I never got around to that, did I? Silly me.” This was what she’d been dreading, having to verbally acknowledge the stupid name Subaki had assigned her, but she couldn’t keep ignoring it unless she wanted to give Effie a reason to be suspicious. Without making it obvious that this was a struggle for her to say, she told her, “When you go to tell them that I’m interested in joining, put it under Vani, will you?”

Effie’s mouth curled up at hearing the name, as if she was trying to commit it to memory, but Kjelle had to take it a step further and spell it, just to make sure that the right name would be put down. “That’s an interesting name,” she said after spelling it back a few times. “Not that it’s bad, I think it’s just interesting. Maybe you should invest in a stage name, especially if you’re trying to get serious in what little wrestling circuit we’ve got around.”

The suggestion did not go unnoticed, but Kjelle couldn’t come out and say that she had a stage name and it was the one that she’d just provided. “Heh, yeah maybe I’ll do that if I ever get a call-up to something more than a friendly tournament. For now I just want the crowds knowing my name, maybe once they’ve got that I can switch it up.”

“Nice perspective on things, maybe we’ll both make it big together someday.” That was when Effie properly grabbed Kjelle’s hand and squeezed it, her grip nearly strong enough to break fingers. “You’re still young, I can tell, so there might be a better chance of you making it big than me, but we’ll see.”

“Y-yeah, we’ll see, totally.” She was trying not to let it show that she was in pain from the squeeze, but when Effie let go of her she did give a loud sigh of relief that she had to play off as something different. “You’ve given me a chance that I didn’t think I’d come into, even with coming to the big city to see what there is to offer. Thanks for that, Effie, it’s super appreciated and you don’t know how much it means to me.”

“I’ll see you around the circuit then, it’s always nice to know there’s more talent than what we’ve been working with.” Standing up from her seat, Effie stretched before turning back to head towards where Elise was waiting. “There’s still a long ride ahead of us, make sure you both eat what I gave you, and don’t be afraid to come talk to us up there if you want some company. Until our paths cross again you guys, it’s been nice to talk to you.”

They both gave her generic farewells and watched as she went back up to where she’d originally been sitting, her immediately getting Elise’s attention and beginning to talk to her about something. “What are the odds of us meeting someone who lives in Krakenburg while on the bus?” O’wain asked, making sure to keep his voice down so Effie didn’t somehow overhear him. “Not just that, but someone who lives there that works with one of the siblings that we were told about. If Subaki knew our luck, he’d probably wonder why he hadn’t sent anyone to do this sooner!”

“I’d agree, but something about this doesn’t feel right to me. She seems too trusting, like she believed everything we said without question, which if Subaki was right and the Nohrian people aren’t the greatest, shouldn’t she have been more skeptical about what we said? We both talked about things she knew about personally and she didn’t bat an eyelash at the weird things we said.” Kjelle was going through all the possibilities of what this could mean for them once they got off the bus, especially since Effie was telling Elise all about what they’d been discussing. “I’m worried that there’s going to be cops at the station waiting for us, and what do we do if there are?”

“Show them your Feroxi patch, they’ll back off when they know you’ve got international police on your side.” Laughing to himself, O’wain quickly stopped when Kjelle wound up a punch that she threatened to throw at him. “Okay, okay, not exactly appropriate when we’re in a country where I don’t think that association would be a good thing. I doubt there’ll be cops waiting for us, though, not with how polite Effie was about everything. She really seemed like she meant what she said.”

“You better be right on this one, O’wain.”

“Please, we’re in Nohr now, call me Odin.” He winked at her and she sighed, knowing that he was right that she needed to call him the name he’d been given, but doing that would just mean that he was going to call her that name she already despised. Almost as if he could read her mind on the matter, he followed up with, “I’ll call you Kay as often as I can, just because I know how you feel about certain things. Where’d that name even come from, anyway?”

She shrugged, even though she had a feeling that she knew the full answer. “Probably from someone, maybe Cordelia, giving Subaki ideas for what name to assign me and him mishearing her completely. I mean, Ella, that’s pretty close to half my name, but the other part…” Explaining where the other part came from, or at least where she was convinced it had gotten its origin, wasn’t something she wanted to dwell on in that moment. Not on a bus in unfamiliar territory, where people could overhear her or grow concerned if they saw that she was thinking back on something that was dear to her heart. “Like I said, it’s probably from Subaki mishearing something that was said.”

“Let’s just hope you don’t have to use it long, I can tell you don’t care to hear it being used by anyone talking to you.” That was an act of kindness that O’wain didn’t have to do right there, and Kjelle wanted to thank him for it, but she wasn’t sure how she could word that without sounding stupid. Thanking him for being an understanding person? Thanking him for not wanting to irritate her more than she already was? Perhaps no thanks would be needed and he already knew how much she appreciated the gesture.

They continued talking for a while, until the driver on the bus turned his radio show back up to full volume and drowned out any conversation that anyone might have been trying to have. Listening to what was coming through the speakers was useless, it made zero sense to them and their uneducated minds because Nohrian politics was worlds different from anything they’d witnessed before; ignoring the chatter was impossible, though, because of how loud and grating the voices were. The only option seemed to be drowning out the noise with something of their own, but between them they had nothing that could play music or video and even if they did, they didn’t have any headphones to use. That meant finding something else to do, and because there were so few realistic options that meant trying to take a nap to get through most of the ride.

Unfortunately, it did not work because of the quality of the ride they were on, the bumps and swerves the bus would put them through too difficult to ignore with their eyes closed. So, for what felt like an infinitely longer ride than the initial flight to Hoshido from Ylisse had been, the two had to sit awake, unable to talk to each other beyond mouthing words, staring out the windows and looking around the vehicle on which they were trapped. They did break into the box of food Effie had given them and enjoyed what they had of it, and thanking her was something they’d have liked to have done, but because of the noise in the bus it wasn’t happening until after they stopped.

Except when they pulled into the bus station that night, there was zero chance of getting to give that thanks to her. The driver got up from his seat and came to direct everyone off, but because there were literally four people on the bus it became letting the first two off, then holding the others where they were for nearly ten minutes before letting them leave as well. Their first introduction to the city of Windmere was in the dark, the dim streetlights illuminating their way into the slums from the station, and they could only guess that someone as high-profile as Elise would have been escorted away from the station by a means that wasn’t by foot.

O’wain and Kjelle were _not_ high-profile and didn’t have the slightest of clues where they were meant to go, so following those lights was their only choice unless they wanted to sleep at the station for the night. Finding a hotel where they could get a room proved difficult, but thankfully there was one along the path into town that claimed to have a vacancy—even though their rates were atrocious, something that they attributed to its proximity to where the new visitors were coming in. If they were going to gouge anyone with their prices, it would be people new to the area, and O’wain felt slightly horrid about how he was spending a solid chunk of the Nohrian money that Subaki had given them just to have somewhere comfortable to sleep that first night.

Check-out in the morning came a lot quicker than they realized, with the housekeeping nearly banging down their door demanding they either pay for another night or get out. If they hadn’t already been awake and getting ready to leave as it was, it might’ve ended worse, but they were able to leave the hotel with all their belongings that they still needed, the only thing left behind the remainder of the box of food from Effie, since it had served as dinner and breakfast. Now they had nowhere to stay and needed to know where to go, before another night came around and they were forced to cough up more money for another hotel to sleep in.

“I…think that’s the place we stayed in last night,” O’wain said with a pointed nod, after finding a nice park bench to sit on while walking around, him having pulled out his map of the city right after leaving the hotel to try and get some understanding of where they were. “Seems like it’s right along the road from the station, so it adds up. Now we’re looking for, uh, the Complex, aren’t we?”

“I mean, yeah, I’d say that’s what we’re doing, if we’re making this whole trip as short as possible.” Sitting next to him, Kjelle was looking at the map and trying to make sense of the winding streets and maze-like parts of the city, her finger tracing along parts to connect them to where O’wain claimed they were. “This is stupid though, why does this city make no sense whatsoever? Why would anyone want to live here?”

He shrugged, his eyes following where her finger was moving across the paper. “I don’t know, it doesn’t seem like it’s a very great place to end up. Maybe everyone who lives here was born here, so they don’t know what good city design is like.” Together they worked to find where the so-called Complex was, but after a lengthy search they’d come up with several places it could be, all of which looked vaguely like closed-off places but weren’t labeled with anything. “Great, we aren’t going to find this place if we don’t know what street it’s on or something like that, I don’t think. What do we do now, ask someone for help?”

“We might have to, but there doesn’t seem to be very many people we could ask.” It was the truth, and Kjelle had noticed from when they’d left the hotel that she hadn’t seen anyone casually walking the streets. Even though they were in a park, she hadn’t seen or heard anyone come by, no children playing in the grass or parents out walking pets or anything. “I think we might have to figure this out on our own, which sucks but at least we have a map to help a little. We pick one of these places to start and go take a look around it?”

Since there wasn’t much else they could do, O’wain nodded and went to stand up, but in the process of moving he let one of his hands drop off the map (so he could grab his suitcase and make sure he had it), and rather than stand rigid as it had been before the map bent over. He saw what was on the other side and let out a guffaw-like laugh, getting Kjelle to focus on what he’d noticed rather than getting her backpack situated. “Who would’ve guessed that this map has some kind of news articles on the back? And it looks kinda like they’re about things we didn’t hear in the bus yesterday at that, what are the odds?”

She didn’t know how to answer, yet after they’d flipped the map around and had read the headline on the article—which was made difficult given that it was mirrored in appearance, but they managed to pick it apart—they had a lead to work with. “Arrests at the family compound?” he said, Kjelle nodding at his interpretation of the words. “Jeez, this is weird that they have it printed backwards on here, but maybe it’s something they don’t want people knowing about? Arrests for prostitution, it seems, so what kind of place is this that they’re running?”

“I’m not sure, but we know your cousin’s there so we should—” Kjelle’s voice trailed off as she read through the body of the article, that specifically gave an intersection that at least the business office of what was officially known as the Krakenburg Complex, but the people regarded as just another compound in town. That was somewhere they could find on the other side of the map and go to, to get the answers and find the person they were looking for, but that seemed deceptively easy. That wasn’t what was on her mind right then, though, as she shifted to looking at the picture next to the article, which depicted two people who looked about their ages, one with short, light hair and the other with long hair that was darker even in the grayscale. “—I’m going to guess that either those are the people who were arrested, or they’re the people they worked for. They don’t look like Elise or Effie so that’s good, and it’s definitely not Xander or your cousin, which is also good.”

“At least we don’t have to worry about who we’re looking for not being there when we show up then, yeah,” O’wain agreed, also looking at the picture. “But how do we know where we’re going, this city’s still a disaster and there’s still no one around to ask for help.”

“Don’t worry, I know where we’ve got to go.” She didn’t actually know, but after flipping the map back over and finding the intersection mentioned in the article (conveniently located on the far opposite side of town, as was expected), they at least knew the general direction they needed to be heading in. That journey took most of the day due to the unreliability of the roads the map told them to follow, taking them down alleys that would hit vehicle-only roads that they couldn’t cross, or snaking them around and spitting them out far away from where they intended to go. Two stops for meals had to be made, and it was nearing nighttime when they realized just how hopelessly lost they’d gotten themselves in Windmere while trying to follow what was obviously a propaganda map.

That meant another night in a seedy hotel, this one cheaper than the previous one but even more suspicious to stay in, but when morning came they weren’t kicked out by impatient housekeepers. In fact, when they got around to leaving there didn’t seem to be any employees in the building at all, very strange given that they were guests there, but there was no reason to question it. The lack of anyone being around when they left worked in their favor, as when they stepped outside there was a clear view of a street sign that was one of the two that they were looking for, but the road seemed to be vehicle-only, like so many others in that city. “There’s no one to see us if we run across it,” Kjelle noted after watching the street for several minutes to see zero cars come by. “If we go fast, we can get on the other side and we’ll be that much closer to done with this already. What do you say, you ready to break more laws than we already have?”

“I’m not sure the daughter of two police officers should ever be so eager to break laws, but you know what? If you’re down, I’m down.” O’wain was bracing himself for whatever was going to happen, but Kjelle knew that nothing would happen at all, aside from them crossing a street they shouldn’t have otherwise. Exactly as predicted, not a single car impeded their crossing and they were able to continue on their adventure on what they figured was the correct side of the street.

Within minutes the road was bustling with cars, whatever having kept the people away having let them out of its grasp, and that meant it became much more challenging to stay out of harm’s way while walking the streets. By the time they felt like they needed to consider stopping for lunch, they’d walked countless city blocks and hadn’t found the other cross-street they were looking for; at least, that was what they thought, until they were examining their surroundings for somewhere to eat and saw the signs labeling the intersection they were standing at. It was exactly where they believed they needed to be, and that meant that somewhere nearby was the office for the Complex, which would lead them to finding Inigo and bringing him home with them.

Finding exactly which of the identical-looking buildings was the one they wanted would have been more difficult if any of the others had been occupied, but with every locked door they got closer to where they needed to be. Walking inside the first door they could actually open brought them into what looked like a waiting room, with chairs covered in ripped upholstery lining two walls, while the third had a door and a reception desk. “Sorry, we don’t do visitors here, damn snoops wanting to check the news for themselves,” the lady behind the desk said, putting out the cigarette she had hanging from her mouth as she spoke. “Do yourselves a favor and get lost before I call security.”

“It’s kind of an important matter,” O’wain started, before Kjelle nudged him, giving him the silent reminder that he needed to think before he spoke. “We aren’t here for a visit, we’re here to see someone.”

“Same thing, all of you people have been in and out of these doors since the news broke looking for answers to what went on inside. Do as I say and get lost, security won’t treat you nicely if they’re brought in for another matter like this.” She didn’t seem to be moving too quickly, but they couldn’t see either of her hands so it was possible she was hitting some invisible-to-them call button. “There’s no one at Krakenburg that wants your company, if you’re looking for business matters go to the HQ for the corporation itself, not to the family living quarters.”

Telling her that they weren’t there to talk business but rather to speak with someone that they were certain lived with the family wasn’t an option, but turning back and recalculating what to do was just as impossible. “Look, we just want you to call someone out here and let us talk to them for like five minutes,” Kjelle said, glancing at O’wain several times as she spoke to make sure that he wasn’t doing anything to go against what words she used. He couldn’t make their true intentions clear, not if she was trying to frame it as something else entirely. “Please, I get that you’re having a rough time around here but we’re not here about what’s been in the news, promise.”

“People like you are always looking for what’s been in the news,” the lady retorted, standing up to show that she was meaning business, one of her hands pointing towards the door while the other was still obscured by the desk. “Security is going to have a field day with you, hopefully you don’t get stupid and try to press charges against them because they will wipe the floor with you. You are considered trespassing and—” She stopped talking and her face came alight with a smirk when the door on that wall opened, but when she saw that it was a woman with pale blonde hair coming out, rather than the security she was hyping up, her face fell. “—miss Effie, I didn’t accidentally call you to take care of the garbage, did I?”

Both O’wain and Kjelle had turned their eyes to the door when it had opened, and seeing Effie come out had been a bit of a tense moment. She’d seemed so nice on the bus, was she going to turn on them once they’d met again? Her reaction was heavily delayed as she dropped the large bag she had draped over her shoulder, checking from head to toe to make sure her eyes weren’t deceiving her about who’d wandered into that entry building. “I can’t believe the two of you stumbled upon this place,” she finally said, ignoring the woman at the desk completely. “What brings you in here? Looking for somewhere to stay?”

Once again they weren’t exactly able to speak the truth on the matter, but as they tried coming up with some explanation for how they’d just happened to find their way there, she was jumping to her own conclusions. “Oh, don’t worry, I’ve gotcha understood loud and clear. I’m gonna go see if I can find Elise or one of her siblings to see what strings can be pulled for you, since I think they’re still looking to fill some positions.” She kicked her bag out of the doorway and looked to the woman at the desk, giving her a warning to not do anything to the visitors until she came back with someone.

The woman grumbled something under her breath when Effie went back through the door, sitting down at the desk and gesturing to the chairs with a rather vulgar hand motion. “You’re lucky she got here before the big guns did, you’d be out crying for your mommies if she hadn’t taken mercy on you. Just sit there and be quiet until someone comes for you, if they ever do, anyway. I swear, if Effie’s messing with me I’m going to…” Her threat became impossible to understand with how much she was talking at an inaudible level, but neither of the people sitting there particularly wanted to know what she was saying.

They were hesitant to say anything to each other, but the waiting room was just them and the lady at the desk, no sounds there to break them from how painfully awkward the situation was. O’wain spent the time looking around, trying to find something in the barren room to fixate on, while Kjelle’s eyes were glued to Effie’s bag, which was so big that she had to be carrying her own pads or something similar for some kind of fight practice. How lucky they really were, to come in before Effie had left for the day, or they’d be sitting somewhere different questioning what they’d be able to do in order to get into the Complex. But before that, how lucky they were that they’d been on that bus ride into Nohr with her in the first place, because without that they wouldn’t have had this way to get inside!

When the door opened up again, it wasn’t Effie who came in at first, although she was right behind, picking up her bag with a wave and leaving through the front of the building. The lady at the desk seemed to tense up at the presence of the new woman who’d come inside, and it took a moment for the pair sitting there to understand why that was; this was, without a doubt, one of the two people who had their picture there with that article on the map, which meant she had to be one of the other siblings of Nohr. “Elise said that if Effie could trust you both, I should be able to do it,” she said, her voice sounding fake and sultry at the same time, and she came towards the two with a sweeping motion in every step. “Welcome to the next step of your lives, my darlings. Welcome to the family here at Krakenburg.”

“To the…family?” Kjelle repeated, while O’wain was eyeing the woman suspiciously, especially as she came closer and closer to them, until they were able to be staring at her chest much easier than her face, as one required craning their heads back. “I don’t think I understand what you mean, we’re not here for anything like that.”

“Oh? Elise did say that you two seemed like you needed somewhere to stay, or at least that was what she was told, she did mention not speaking to you herself.” This woman’s chest had a nasty habit of being bounced with every word she spoke, something that was most likely intentionally done but was distracting nonetheless. “You must excuse this mess then, if you’re not looking for a place of residence then I’ll take my leave.”

“No, wait! We could use somewhere to stay, and if you’re willing to take us in then we’ll gladly do it!” Once again O’wain was speaking without thinking, but when their opportunity to get inside and find his cousin was about to turn and abandon them, he didn’t have much of a choice to consider what he was saying. “We just got here to Windmere the other day and haven’t had the best time so far, but if you’re offering us a bed for the night then that’s the best thing we’ve had happen this whole time!”

The woman stood tall for a moment, before bending back over, leaning in uncomfortably close to O’wain’s face. “I believe you misunderstand me, cutie. I’m not offering you a place for the night, I am offering you both a job here with us, to replace to unfortunately-arrested people we’ve recently lost. Neither of you seem like you’d be breaking the law under our noses, so despite doing this blind I feel everyone will understand why I’m doing it.” She reached out to stroke his jaw, but he could only tremble in her presence, not enjoying the closeness she was putting him through.

“You’re offering us jobs without even telling us your name?” Kjelle asked, pointing out that it was slightly suspicious that they hadn’t done any greeting of any sort and were already getting initiated into the fold. “How do we know you’re not some impostor or something?”

“That’s a valid point, but no one could pose as me and get away with it.” Stepping to the side so that she was now far too much into Kjelle’s personal space, the woman laughed as she gave a proper greeting that would have been better to start the conversation with. “As I am sure you’ve heard before, I am Camilla, eldest daughter of the children at Krakenburg, a lover of all things person-like and a caring heart to everyone who steps into our home. I believe Elise told me your names after returning home the other night, but with the arrests fresh in my mind I may have forgotten them. Care to share them with me, to make this meeting properly official?”

“I’m Odin, and the person you’re trapping in her chair is Vani,” O’wain replied, not making Kjelle acknowledge the name she still hadn’t gotten used to. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, miss Camilla, and thank you for giving us this opportunity here with your family. Are we going to go over the job details at any point?”

“We certainly will, but that would be something to do in the presence of my brothers, they’re the ones who handle that part of the hiring business.” Camilla was too busy talking to notice the side-eye Kjelle gave O’wain, but when she backed up a couple steps and saw that they were both still sitting there, looking vaguely traumatized about something that had happened, she put on the largest pout she could manage. “Are my new friends upset about anything I said or did? Do we need to hug to make it all better?”

There was no nice way to reject her offer of a hug, despite them both making it clear that she hadn’t upset them at all, and so they were squeezed in against her, a situation that they hadn’t expected this trip would put them in. After the hug broke Camilla turned to the lady at the desk and told her to reject any further applicants for the open positions and to lock the front door once all residents had returned for the day, but while she was leading the two towards the door inside the lady decided to speak up. “Ma’am, neither of them actually applied for this, are you sure you want to walk them right inside and give them your time of day? I think Effie’s playing favorites with them, that woman there looks like she’s one of her type and do you really need a second Effie around?”

“Hush now, they’re recommended by word of my sister and I’ll take precious Elise’s word over any paper application every single time.” Winking at the desk lady, Camilla opened the door and let the two bring their bags inside with them, the world on the other side of that building so much different than every part of Windmere they’d seen so far. While the city had been rundown in places and looked like it wasn’t having the best of times, the exterior of all buildings inside of the Krakenburg Complex were modernized and looked to be kept pristine for anyone who was allowed in to see them. “Xander always tells us that we can’t have guests inside these walls, but I sneak them in every way I know how. One of the perks of being second-oldest, I suppose.”

Not sure how they were expected to reply, the two remained silent as they followed along, Camilla taking her time as she purposely swayed her hips side to side with every step, making the walk painful to watch as neither of them were really interested in what she was offering. “Before we can make this informal hiring an official deal, I suppose I should introduce you both to my brothers, one of which gets the final say on your employment and the other gets to help me decide which of you is his and which is mine.” The concept of one of them having to work with her on a permanent basis was bothersome, especially with how flirtatious and pushy she was acting, but speaking up would have jeopardized everything.

Making a mental note to never let her friend live down this sacrifice he’d forced her to make in order for them to find his cousin, Kjelle tried focusing anywhere but where Camilla was walking, but her erratic movements made it impossible to do that. She was still talking, going on about some of the life standards within the walls of the Complex that they would now have to adhere to. “You’re allowed to do what you want within reason, like leaving the area on occasion or taking trips of your own, but the moment your master, the person you’re assigned to, decides you’re needed, you better be there. And don’t take what we’ve last been in the news about to heart, there’s no prostitution rings around here to speak of.”

“If there aren’t, why was it in the news?” O’wain asked, finding his voice long enough to catch her off-guard with his question. He didn’t think that was enough to leave it at, after giving it more thought, so he added, “Did someone lie about this place? It…seems like it’s not that bad, so I don’t think I understand why someone would do that.”

“Dear Odin, if only you knew the full story to why they made those outrageous claims. It was a huge misunderstanding, but the people who were arrested were bordering on illicit activities, it was only necessary to have them removed before the activities grew even less wholesome than they already were.” Camilla didn’t seem bothered by having to answer, but she did sound slightly sad talking about it. “I’ll miss my companion, but her leaving was what was best for all of us here.”

“And now you’re hiring more people because they’re gone, makes perfect sense.” It seemed like Camilla was purposely skewing the truth to make everything sound better than it really was, but Kjelle couldn’t be certain about that and didn’t want to say the wrong thing. “How convenient for us, walking in right when you need us.”

Camilla gave a whistling laugh, which turned into something so body-shaking that she had to spin around and use the people she was with to support her so she didn’t fall. “Convenient for you? Think about how the two of you showing up saved us all the trouble of searching for perfect people to fill those holes! I love the attitudes of you both and I can tell you’ll be fitting right in soon enough, one of you with me and one with my brother.”

Once they were walking again, she’d gone right back to telling them more about the area and what they’d be needing to do while living there, but she was intentionally staying away from talking too much about the job itself. All they’d gotten to know was that they’d be assistants of a sort and had to be available at a moment’s notice, but beyond that all they’d been told was about the perks of living at Krakenburg. They didn’t even know anything about this other person that one of them was expected to work for, other than that he was the final sibling whose name they hadn’t even heard yet.

They came up to a long building that seemed to have many different gated areas jutting off of it, and Camilla opened the door to enter, letting it slip from her hand once she’d passed through it and nearly knocking the others over with its heavy force slamming into them. “I don’t think she meant to do that,” O’wain whispered to Kjelle once they’d gotten through the door for themselves and were back on Camilla’s tail. “She’s too nice to mean to hit us with a door, it must’ve been an accident.”

“Or maybe she was expecting one of us to open it for her and wanted to punish us for not doing it,” she replied, looking at O’wain with a side-eye that he returned in an instant. “I can’t tell though, and that worries me. I’m starting to think she’s a maniac or something.”

“Naughty children, whispering behind my back, that’s not very appropriate of you, don’t you think?” They didn’t know if she’d heard anything they’d said, but Camilla’s warning was enough to scare them both into standing tall with their lips firmly closed. She brought them to a stop in front of another door, this one labeled with a numbered plaque on the wall, and held her hand up to knock on it. “I’m not sure if he’s in right now, but there’s no time like the present to find out,” she said, before pounding her hand against the door, the sound nearly loud enough to shake everything around them.

It took a few moments, but the door opened and standing on the other side was the single most unamused man that either of them had seen in their lives, his hair a complete mess and his shirt thrown on in such a rush that it was backwards. “Excuse me, Camilla, but you know that it is inappropriate to interrupt me at this time of day, I was in the middle of something.” His voice was snappish and he sounded like her knocking really was the worst interruption he’d ever experienced, but when his sister stepped aside and gestured to the people behind her, his angry expression softened and he seemed a little less annoyed. “You found people. Already. Call me impressed, but where did you pull them from?”

“They dragged themselves in, actually. They’re the people Elise was telling us from the bus, the ones that her darling Effie fell in love with and wanted the best for. I’d consider us the best for anyone, wouldn’t you, Leo?” Camilla reached to grab O’wain to pull him closer, but he panicked when he saw her hand and pushed Kjelle into her grasp instead. That meant that she was dragged forward, her cheek being pinched to show how supposedly great she was for the role she’d been selected for, while the man in the doorway shook his head.

“You’re funny, but I’m not interested in that one. If you’re serious about these being the replacements, I’d prefer the other one.” He pointed towards O’wain, who had thought he was safe for the moment when he’d given Kjelle up as sacrifice but now realized he was not out of the danger zone. “You, what’s your name?”

“Odin, my name is Odin, but what was that about you ‘preferring’ me?” O’wain was tongue-tied, something that didn’t often happen when it came to him, but as he was being focused on he could feel himself growing embarrassed by the second. “Could you, uh, please tell me what you mean by that?”

“I mean that I want you to work with me, not your friend there. Camilla, she can be all yours, I’m sure you’d like that better anyway.” Eyeing how his sister hadn’t let go of the cheek she was pinching, Leo remained relatively stone-faced as O’wain came closer to him, directing him into the room despite his hesitance. “Thank you for this gift, sister. I’d tell you I appreciate it, but I can’t say I do yet. Let me get to know Odin a bit before I make that call.”

Camilla laughed, finally letting go of Kjelle so that she could clasp her hands together in front of her. “I wouldn’t expect anything different from you, Leo. Go enjoy getting to know your new companion, I’m going to have the time of my life getting to know mine.” The door closed without any other words exchanged, and she looked to Kjelle with a determined gaze. “I’m sorry that we’ve had to split you up like that, but I couldn’t exactly rearrange how the open positions are. Beruka wouldn’t mesh well with Leo, and I couldn’t fathom taking his little friend away from him.”

“That’s okay, I’m sure Odin will be happy where he is, and your brother seemed fine with having him instead of me.” Kjelle couldn’t say that she wished she could switch places with O’wain, but she definitely wished that she didn’t have to be with Camilla for a second longer than she already had been. This woman was nice enough, but she was rather hands-on and made her uncomfortable with how close she insisted on being. “So what are they going to do now that they’re in there together?”

“Same thing we’ll be doing once we’re to my quarters, that is, getting to know each other as best as we can in a short period of time. I’m excited to have you partnered with me and Beruka from here on out, Vani, you’re a sweetheart and you’ll fit right in.” Hearing the name used almost didn’t register in Kjelle’s mind that it was her being spoken of, but she managed to get her thoughts together and nod in understanding. “You’ll meet Beruka soon enough, she’s out for the moment running some errands but when she gets back I promise the two of you will become fast friends. Of course, she’ll have to understand that she doesn’t get to sleep in the bed tonight, but I think she’ll forgive you.”

That was a strange comment to make, and unlike so much else of what Camilla had said, Kjelle couldn’t let that one go without a response. “Where’s she going to sleep then, on the floor? The couch? Do you only have one bed in your room for some reason?”

“Naïve Vani, she’s going to sleep in her own bed for the night.” The answer led to just as much confusion as the original comment had, but Camilla didn’t seem to see what was wrong with what she was saying, something made clear when she followed up with, “It’s been a few nights since she had to and I’m sure she figured she’d have at least a week more before she did again, but things changed when you walked into my life.”

Assuming this meant that this other person was going to have to sleep in her own bed because she was sharing a room with her and she would need the company, Kjelle decided it would be best to drop the subject where it was before she got more confused. “Okay, well, if she’s going to forgive me then I guess she can’t be that bad of a person, even if that’s a silly thing to need to forgive me for.”

When it came time to learn the truth, and find out that Beruka (who was a quiet and unnerving person to be in the same room with) was going to be sleeping in her own bed because she wasn’t going to have room in Camilla’s that night, Kjelle wished she’d allowed herself to learn that sooner. She’d never had to share a bed with a stranger before, and while she’d been sharing a bed with O’wain the past couple of nights that had really been the extent of her bed-sharing experience. She couldn’t back out of needing to do it, because Camilla was super insistent that it happened, as an initiation of sorts into their little group, but it was her justification for it that was strangest of all. “We all learn to love each other in our pairs, some more than others naturally, but we do make sure that we give it our best with time spent close together, even if we’re asleep. Now unpack your bag and change into your nightclothes, even if your sports top and shorts are adorable, because we need to find your perfect place in my bed.”

That was the first night, as far as Kjelle could remember, that she had someone draped over her as she slept, and she hoped and prayed that it would be the last for a long time.

* * *

When morning came and she was still not alone in the bed, but her bedmate had traded cuddling with her for sitting upright brushing knots out of her long hair, Kjelle quickly shut her eyes once more and wished that she hadn’t decided to help O’wain out after all. She hadn’t slept well, given that she was used to sharing beds with people who minded their own space, not people that made sure they were touching her at all times, and when she tried to go back to sleep she knew she wasn’t going to accomplish anything. “I know you’re awake, dearie,” Camilla said, setting her hairbrush in her lap and looking back over her shoulder at Kjelle as she faked sleeping to get out of conversation. “Your breathing changed when you woke up, I know that you didn’t fall back asleep that quickly.”

“I don’t know how you’d know what I sound like when I’m sleeping, because I really didn’t sleep at all,” she replied, keeping her eyes closed so she didn’t have to look at Camilla. “Next time you have me in your bed, can you please not be on top of me like that? I don’t really do well when others are touching me in my sleep.”

“My apologies that I’m such a touchy-feely person when I’m asleep, I’ll make sure I don’t let it happen again. I was just _so_ excited to get to share a bed with my new best friend that I forgot to check with her about what her bedtime rules are.” She sounded upset at what she’d just heard, but before Kjelle could say anything Camilla was right back to brushing her hair, acting like nothing had happened. “Maybe I’ll hold off on inviting you back into the bed until you’ve gotten a bit more used to the way things work around here. I’m sure Beruka would be pleased to know that she gets her spot back.”

That was a point that Kjelle wasn’t completely sure of, because based on her limited interaction with the other woman working in the same role she was, she couldn’t see Beruka as being someone who loved the smothering affection much either. “Or maybe you could not have to sleep with one of us in your bed? Wouldn’t a teddy bear or something work if you really need to cuddle something?”

“Oh no, I don’t think you quite understand my reason for needing someone in the bed with me if you think some plaything will suffice.” Her brushing was picking up speed as she spoke, as if she was brushing faster just because she was getting a bit heated. “I crave the physical touch of another person, in a sensual matter, nothing dirty wanted from anyone. I get so lonely if I don’t have someone right within my grasp at all times, and that includes when I’m sleeping.”

It was becoming a regular thing for Kjelle to not know how to respond to anything Camilla said, and this was no exception. “Er, well, maybe I’ll keep that in mind for the future, but I really can’t do the whole ‘sleep touching’ thing without losing sleep for myself.”

“Sometimes little quirks like that cannot be helped, I hope in the future that you can get over it though because you were so receptive of my cuddles.” Camilla didn’t say another word as she finished up brushing her hair, tying it back into a low ponytail once it was knot-free, and it was at that point that she got off the bed and moved to the closet, finding something to wear. While she was distracted with all of her clothes, Kjelle tried to make the move to escape the room, but the moment her feet hit the wood floor Camilla was looking at her, smiling as she held up two dresses. “Help me decide what to wear, darling Vani, I simply cannot choose for myself. Do you think the light dress or the dark dress would look better with my skin tone?”

“I think they’d both look fine, probably,” Kjelle replied, not knowing the first thing about proper fashion despite having been taught many different times by many different people. “I think you should wear whatever you think is better for the day, because it’s not like I know what you’re doing today or anything.”

Camilla’s face erupted into a smile, as she tossed both dresses aside and went back to looking through her closet. “I love the sass you’re willing to give me, it’s so playful and it’s very adorable hearing a girl like you try to be so rude to someone when I know you just can’t do it. I’m having a meeting with Xander about you today, making sure that hiring you without his approval won’t be too much of a problem.” When she turned away from the closet once more, she was holding a different black dress, one that Kjelle immediately knew would be skin-tight and on the verge of ripping if she chose to wear it. “I think this will make the impression I need to make, that I mean serious business about getting to keep my new best friend here with me.”

“It’ll definitely make some kind of impression, that’s for sure.”

“More sass, I love it so much! Teach Beruka how to be that sassy, all she does is bluntly say things and I can never tell if she’s joking or not when she does it.” Without caring that she had an audience in the room with her, Camilla stripped down to her minimal underwear (which made Kjelle blush to see, out of the discomfort she felt being there) before putting the dress on, barely managing to get her chest into it but having the outfit stay in once piece as she paraded it around the room. “Beautiful as always, thank you for the advice and you have a great day getting to know my sweet Beruka better while I’m busy!”

“I’m doing what today?” It was Beruka’s voice, her having heard Camilla’s statement when she entered from the side bedroom. “I didn’t volunteer to play chaperone for your new friend. That isn’t my job.”

“Don’t think of it as chaperoning her, she has every right to be here, just as you do. Think of it as getting to know your new partner in crime!” Already sliding her feet into impossibly-high heels that would only make her swaying walk even more pronounced, Camilla didn’t notice the death glare Beruka shot at her—but Kjelle did, and she gulped down hard when she realized that this wasn’t going to be a fun way to spend her time.

Or maybe that was just how Camilla was supposed to be made to think it was, because the moment she was gone, Beruka’s attitude changed completely. While she still looked unimpressed and wasn’t eager to do anything, she was a lot kinder when she spoke. “I was hoping Camilla would leave soon enough,” she said, sitting on the edge of the bed and grabbing the hairbrush that had been being used before, so she could run it through her own hair a few times. “I love when she has things of her own to do. She hates going to the places I enjoy spending my time.”

“What kind of places are those?” Kjelle asked, her mind going back to the conversation she’d had with Effie about the dojo nearby and wondering if perhaps Beruka was also into that sort of thing. “I don’t take you as the kind of lady to like clothes shopping or anything like that.”

“You’re right, and as I don’t see you as one either, when Camilla wants to go out we might both be suffering. I was thinking more like shooting ranges, weapon collectors, places with a bit more violence to them.” Even though she was talking about violent places, Beruka seemed to be the most excited Kjelle had seen her yet, which was concerning but as long as the violence wasn’t being aimed at her she wasn’t going to worry too much. “When Camilla brought me into the fold she kept me from having to serve time after a…crime I wish I had properly committed.”

“I’d ask what kind of crime but that’s not really important, I don’t think.” Biting her lip as she thought about how that might be the dumbest decision she’d ever make, not asking a criminal what she wished she’d done, Kjelle didn’t know where she should go with the conversation but she did have something to ask that perhaps Beruka would be able to answer. “Do you guys have a gym or something around here? Krakenburg seems large enough to have at least a little fitness room for everyone to use.”

“I should’ve known you’d be interested in that. Come with me and I’ll show you our gym, but you have to be dressed appropriately. Nothing stupid, nothing dangerous, nothing that can be caught in equipment.” Whatever it was that Beruka was expecting for Kjelle to wear, it most likely wasn’t a tank top and short shorts (slightly more modest than she had been the day before, but still exposing her arms and midriff), and once she’d changed into that she was met with the corners of Beruka’s mouth turned slightly upward. “I had assumed yesterday’s choice in clothing had been done to be more appealing to someone trying to hire you. Maybe you are actually as athletic as you show yourself to be, and it isn’t an act.”

“Believe me when I say I could probably bench press you if I really wanted to.” That wasn’t a threat she should have made, she quickly realized, when Beruka looked interested in seeing it come to fruition, but they moved on and out of the little building without acting on it. As they walked, they talked about their favorite athletic endeavors, Beruka’s being weapon-based and Kjelle’s being more in terms of working her whole body out. Of course, her responses were oftentimes delayed by a few moments as Beruka would refer to her by her fake name and she’d have to remind herself that it was in fact her being spoken to.

The gym was in a large building a few minutes’ walk away from where they’d been staying, and when they got to its double doors (after having taken a quick detour to the empty dining hall to grab some somewhat-fresh fruit for breakfast) Beruka reached into her pocket and pulled out a ring of keys. “Have to keep this place locked up at all times, don’t need people who don’t have access getting in and ruining equipment,” she explained as she unlocked the door, pushing it open and locking it behind them once Kjelle had come inside. “It’s probably the best gym in the whole city, but so few of us get to use it.”

“Nicest gym in the city can’t be that hard to manage.” Thinking back to how run-down and poor most of Windmere looked, Kjelle had low expectations for what this gym was going to look like once Beruka turned on the lights, but she was shocked when she was able to see all of the high-quality equipment filling the room. Anything she could ask for in terms of a workout would be possible in that building, from weights to cardio to even swimming, with a large lap pool visible beyond a glass wall. “I stand corrected, this is better than nice, this is amazing! And no one uses this place?”

“There’s a few of us who pop in from time to time, but for the most part it sits empty because no one wants to come in and actually work out. Camilla tries to hold pool parties sometimes but…” Beruka jingled the keys in her hand before she tucked them away. “Can’t do that if you don’t have permission to get inside.”

“So even one of the big, scary siblings of Nohr is locked out of here? How does that work?” Up to that point, Kjelle had been under the impression that the four siblings had all the power they wanted there at the Complex, but hearing Beruka say that Camilla couldn’t get into the gym to use the pool had her rethinking that. “Can any of them get in here?”

Beruka nodded, before taking the shirt she was wearing off, revealing her athletic bra underneath it that she flexed in to warm up some of her upper muscles. “Xander’s the only one of them with a key, and occasionally he brings his partners in for some exercising. I have a key, Effie and Arthur should both have keys but usually only she does, and I believe the only other key that was given out is currently _also_ in my possession.”

“So this place is basically a private club, nice. Guess that means we don’t have to worry about anyone intruding on us and making us feel bad for working out.” Without waiting to see if Beruka had anything to correct her about, Kjelle began weaving her way through the different equipment, on the hunt for something that she wanted to use right then. She could hear Beruka tossing everything she had on her that she didn’t need aside, the sound of the keys muffled by fabric as it hit a wall, and soon enough the other woman was right behind her also on a search. They settled on starting with some light running, the treadmills there more high-tech than anything Kjelle had seen or used before, but she was willing to learn how to make them work.

As they ran next to each other they were silent, Beruka focused on what she was doing to the point that she seemed to forget she had someone there with her, and Kjelle was completely lost in thought about what had been going on. She was hung up on the fact that she’d gotten involved in this place, somewhere between “unwilling employee” and “hostage” but managing to survive given the strange circumstances. Interacting with Camilla wasn’t fun at all, but with Beruka around at least that could be tolerable; she could only wonder what it would’ve been like if there, in front of that open door, Leo hadn’t decided that he wanted to take O’wain in with him.

Thinking about O’wain made her skip a step as she ran, nearly stumbling over her own feet and forcing her to take several seconds to regain the stride she’d been running with. Now that they were in this place, she didn’t know how often she’d be able to see him, let alone how he was faring in his new position. For all she knew, he was just as miserable with which sibling had picked him as she was, and as long as they were separated they wouldn’t be able to talk about that or the important matter that had brought them to Krakenburg in the first place. “Question for you, Beruka,” she said as she started to slow down her pace, the machine registering that she’d run the equivalent of nearly two miles in not much time. “Do you ever get to mingle with everyone else’s companions? Outside of the gym, since I guess this would be a ‘you come when you want’ sort of place.”

“You might every once in a while, typically at mealtimes. But if Camilla wants us at her side we have to follow her rule, we don’t have a say in whether or not we serve her.” Beruka too was coming to a stop, her distance not quite as far as Kjelle’s but she also hadn’t initially started at as fast of a pace. “Why, is there someone you’re interested in spending time with? I know that you met with Effie prior to entering our group, is she who you’re asking about?”

“I wasn’t asking about anyone in specific,” she lied in response, not wanting to say yes because she didn’t want to get pushed into conversations she wasn’t looking for, but not wanting to tell the truth because she wasn’t sure how she’d explain who O’wain was. “It was just a question so I know what’s going to happen when it’s not just us around.”

“That’s fair, I should have known you would want to talk to others.” Jumping off her treadmill and walking towards where some of the free weights were, Beruka waved for Kjelle to follow her once more. “Come this way, I want to see how much you can lift.”

Because she was not one to shy away from proving how inherently strong she was, Kjelle was happy to follow Beruka over to the weights, but when they got there that was when the fun was able to start. The heaviest weight they seemed to have wasn’t very heavy at all, and there were so few of them that the challenge was more about finding some way to hold all of the assorted weights than it was actually lifting any of them. Beruka looked like she was slightly amused with every disk she was adding to the collection Kjelle was holding, but if it was genuine amusement or not she wasn’t going to say. They were onto the third-heaviest weight when the sound of the gym door opening filled the air, and Beruka dropped the weight she was actively adding, hitting her own foot with it.

The string of curses she let out was done under her breath, but watching her go from cool and composed to cursing up a storm made Kjelle lose her focus on what she was holding, her dropping everything she had and thankfully missing hitting either of them, but making a loud crashing sound as the weights hit the floor. “Goodness, I wasn’t expecting there to be people in here!” the person entering called out, breaking Beruka from her curses to glare in the direction the voice had spoken from. “Please, tell me that I haven’t walked in on a circle-jerk or someone getting frisky on the equipment, I’ve done that before and let me tell you, it wasn’t a sight anyone needed to see.”

“How did he get in here, I have his key on the ring with mine,” Beruka grumbled, still grabbing her toe and balancing on one foot as she massaged what had been hurt. “He must have begged to get a replacement after losing his last one, but…”

“Who’s the guy that’s here and why do you sound like you want nothing to do with him?” Based solely on what she’d heard him say, Kjelle wanted nothing to do with this guy either but she had no idea who he was. It wasn’t a voice she’d heard before, so whoever he was, he was going to be someone new that she’d be meeting, but judging by how Beruka didn’t want this guy around, this meeting wasn’t going to be pleasant. Her question was ignored as Beruka decided to yell at him to get lost and go find somewhere else to hang around, and as badly as she wanted to ask her why that response was appropriate she knew she’d get ignored there too.

“Hello lovely ladies, what a surprise to see two people in here when usually I only see one.” The man came from the doorway straight towards them, an eyepatch over one eye and a devious-looking smirk planted firmly on his lips. “Of course, the one I usually see looks just as pleased to have me here as she normally does. I’m not here to leer at you, Beruka, don’t you worry your lovely head.”

“You don’t have a key to get in here with, Niles. Explain how you entered, before I—” Stepping down with her injured foot and bending over to grab the heaviest weight within reach, Beruka wound it back as if she was going to lob it in his direction, something he didn’t flinch at. “—come on, you know I’ll do it if you ask for it.”

“I know you’ll do many things if I ask for them.”

“If those things involve smashing your face in or disemboweling you, you’re correct.” This was a violent side of Beruka coming through, even though she looked exactly as she usually did, not showing that she was angry or displeased with this Niles guy being present. Kjelle wanted to know where he came from, or at least who he worked for, but she didn’t want to interrupt and have the hatred getting slung in her direction instead. “I want you to answer me, right now. How did you get in without your key?”

“Someone forgot to make sure the door was properly shut before locking it, so I was able to push right in without anyone knowing any better of it. What a shame, that someone trying so hard to keep me out but here I am anyway.” Grinning as he saw Beruka’s eyes narrow in his direction, Niles flipped his hair off of his shoulder before setting his sights on Kjelle, who was trying her best to stay out of their spat. “Might I be correct to assume that your special friend here is Camilla’s new plaything? Or did you manage to break the rules and sneak someone of your own inside these walls?”

“I’m not going to speak for her, but she is here because of Camilla. What, are you jealous that I already have someone new to bond with and you don’t?” Sounding even angrier than she previously had, Beruka set down the weight she was holding and reached for Kjelle’s arm to pull her in closer to her, but she was unable to get a hand on her. “Please, Vani, step back from him before he tries to do something. Last time he got ahold of someone new, he decided to carve words into their skin.”

“He consented to it, first of all, and secondly, I didn’t do that with my new pal Odin so there’s no need to worry that I’ll do it to your sweet…Vani, you said her name was?” Walking closer, even with Beruka warning him several times to stay away, Niles got right next to Kjelle before giving a sweeping bow in front of her. “What a lovely name for a lovely woman, and someone I’ve heard of as recently as before I came to see what Beruka dearest was up to in here! Odin hasn’t shut up about you all morning, I hope you know.”

Without realizing she was doing it, Kjelle found herself smiling at the mention of her friend, not even making the mental correction of what his name actually was. “It doesn’t surprise me, he sure loves talking about me as much as he can. What’s he been saying this time, I’d be shocked if it wasn’t something stupid or—”

She cut herself off with a shriek as Niles, still in the middle of his bow, grabbed one of her exposed thighs and pinched it between two fingers. “You disgusting perv, why are you introducing yourself to her this way?” Beruka asked, a very displeased tone to her voice, yet she wasn’t taking any action against him beyond her scolding name for him. She was watching Kjelle smack at him, trying to get him to let go of her but he persisted for several moments until he stood tall with a pensive look on his face. “You didn’t even tell her your name and you’re already feeling her up.”

“I was not feeling her up, Odin had told me and Leo a lovely story about her and something she possesses on her body and I was merely examining for myself.” Niles sounded proud of what he’d done, or at least not like he’d done anything wrong. “Those are some uniquely-placed scars you have there, Vani. Would love to know how yours are so different from the ones Odin has on his arm, but he refused to get into too much detail about what had happened. Just that the two of you were in an accident once upon a time. A tragedy for two attractive people to be marred at once, but I understand that it happens to the best of us.” He gestured to his eyepatch, implying that it was hiding an actual injury.

“Okay, first of all, no one gets to grab my legs and ‘check’ my scars without my permission. And secondly, if Odin told you so much about what happened and you can _clearly_ see his scars so you know he isn’t lying, why did you feel the need to check anyway?” The fact that her legs had a bunch of faint, yet still noticeable scars that had stretched and grown as she’d gotten older didn’t ever bother Kjelle, but whenever someone pointed them out she did begin to feel defensive of them. It wasn’t that she really knew about what had happened for her to get them, as that had occurred when she was months old and neither of her parents had been present for it so what they knew was a secondhand retelling as it was. It was because she had so much more to admire when it came to her legs that focusing on the little scars made her feel like her muscles weren’t good enough. “He wouldn’t lie about us both getting torn up in a pile of glass, that’d just be dumb.”

“I’ve heard even dumber lies before, but forgive me for wanting to get to see the damage for myself.” He bowed once more, but this time he did it with more of a sweeping motion, his arms coming back in close to his body as he stood straight back up. “Beruka is correct in that I neglected to introduce myself to you before that display of investigative skills, so let us take it from the top. I am Niles, the most interesting man you’ll meet within this place, and you are the charming Vani, if I can take Odin’s word on that to heart.”

She twisted her mouth as she thought about how she was supposed to interpret that interpretation of herself, especially if it had come from her friend as he said it did. “You certainly can, I’ve known Odin for a long time and if there’s one thing he’d never do, it’s lie about me to anyone. Just like I’d never lie about him.” Mentally Kjelle found it hilarious that she was saying she wouldn’t lie about him while using a name that was nothing more than a lie itself, but as he’d accepted his new persona much more willingly than she had hers, it wasn’t as much of a lie as her claiming to be someone else was. “Now do you mind telling me why the hell you were talking about the scars on my legs, out of everything else there is to talk about? You just met the guy and he’s telling you his tragic backstory?”

“I assure you that it started from me getting curious about what tore up his arm, because those marks looked far more fresh than they actually are. He was the one who dragged you into things, and because you seemed so interesting I had to come check you out for myself. Thankfully for you, there’s no need to worry about this progressing any further than this.” Niles was watching Beruka as she glared at him, arms crossed over her chest with one finger tapping to show how she wanted him to stop talking. “Please, I am getting to the part that assures this poor girl that my groping of her thighs was merely inquisitive and that nothing more is to come of it.”

“You’re not getting there fast enough.” The tapping slowed for a moment while Beruka waited for him to finish up, but when he stared back at her with his eyebrow raised over his visible eye, she picked up the pace once more. “Come on, Vani and I have things we need to do while we have the time. You’re wasting our daylight with your drama.”

He scoffed at her choice of words, glancing towards where Kjelle was still standing, watching him with slight wariness in her eyes as she waited to hear what he had to say. “Drama, she says, as if me making sure what my new friend says is true classifies as drama! I don’t mean to cause anything of the sort with my appearance here, especially as I have zero interest in pursuing anything more with you. At all. No matter what Beruka might claim.”

“That’s something he tells everyone, and maybe this’ll be the time he’s actually speaking the truth about it.” Uncrossing her arms, Beruka pointed towards the door with a snap, Niles backing away slowly a couple paces before she started stepping towards him. “Now get lost, you have no right to be in here as you still don’t have a key for entry! Go find your loverboy or your new friend and bother them, not us!”

“Loverboy?” Kjelle repeated, barely finishing the word before Beruka was shushing her, so that Niles didn’t get the impression to stay and explain that choice of wording. She got the hint and kept quiet until after they’d heard the door latch closed and there was no longer any sign of someone that wasn’t them there in the gym. “Who were you talking about with that one, huh? You couldn’t have been talking about someone important, could you?”

Beruka shrugged, bending down to start cleaning up the mess with the weights they’d made when Niles had entered. “I might have been, Niles knows who it was about and that’s what matters here. You don’t need to worry much about it, not for now anyway.”

“Yeah, because that kind of cryptic message really helps with me feeling comfortable with hearing that.” She knew it wasn’t about her friend, but based on how creepy that encounter with Niles had been, Kjelle was slightly worried about O’wain’s safety if he was forced into close quarters with the guy. “I get that I’m new around here and don’t need to know all the secrets, but if it was important, you’d tell me about it, right?”

“Something like that, yes.” Beruka didn’t say another word as they cleaned up their mess, and after all of the weights were back where they belonged she was moving on to a different part of the gym, to use a different set of workout machines. Kjelle hung back and kept playing with the weights for a bit longer before she joined her, but they weren’t at the gym for more than about an hour after that had all blown over so there wasn’t much time to really talk about it then either. Once they left, anything they’d talked about there in the gym had to be pushed to the wayside as they were going to be in Camilla’s company once more and she wasn’t going to be bothered with their personal nonsense, so if anything was going to come of it they’d have to wait until the next time they went somewhere alone.

No one was going to make Beruka talk after that long of an intermission, so finding out what she’d meant with that pointed jab at Niles wasn’t going to come from her mouth. But Kjelle wasn’t going to let herself forget what she’d heard, even if it took an extended period of time to get answers. She might not have wanted to get involved in the Nohrian adventure in the first place, but she was there and she was committed to making sure it all went smoothly, and that meant making sure her companion was safe through it all.

 


	4. The Young "Prince"

It took until the second week after arriving at Krakenburg for there to be a time where the ladies went to the dining hall to find other people sitting in there. Every day up to that point, Beruka and Kjelle had gone in together and left without speaking to anyone but each other, unless Camilla came with them, in which case they had her to talk with as well. As for anyone serving any of the other siblings, they hadn’t seen anything to show that they still were alive and well, something that Beruka claimed was completely typical and that it only was a cause for concern if everyone was in the hall at once.

The day they entered and weren’t alone had a single person sitting at one of the tables, head down as they were shoveling food into their mouth. “Why am I not surprised to see that Effie’s in here eating like we’re going to be going on strict rations this month?” Beruka asked in a low voice, so that Kjelle could hear her but Effie couldn’t. “I’m more surprised that she’s here alone. Should we ask her why that is?”

“When I met her the first time, it was just her and Elise, and the second time she was going somewhere by herself, so is it really weird that she’s alone?” Kjelle’s mind was definitely not on solving a mystery she didn’t fully understand, as she was looking forward to getting some food and then going over to the gym for a workout over several hours. “But if you think something needs to be said, then say it. I’m not making decisions for you.”

“We can move on then, I couldn’t care less about where Arthur might be and I rarely ever see Elise in here, with or without her assistants.” Based on how people seemed to talk about this guy who sounded like he was Effie’s other half, Kjelle had a slight desire to push Beruka into talking more about him, but she chose not to when she marched right into the kitchen area to grab her usual breakfast without further conversation.

It was when they were on their way out that Effie happened to notice she wasn’t in the building alone and she called out to the pair with a greeting, them both turning to acknowledge that they’d heard her with a wave. “Fancy seeing you both in here, hm?” Effie said with a chuckle as she got up from her chair to come closer to the ladies who were inching towards the door. “Listen, I’m sure you’ve already got plans for today, but Elise and I were going to go to the company store to see the new items later and I bet it’d be more fun if either of you or Camilla came with us.”

“I didn’t know there was even a company store,” Kjelle admitted, before realizing that it made perfect sense for there to be something like that in a place like the Complex. It seemed to be its own little world wrapped up inside high walls, with very little reason to leave unless it was for something special, so having a store that the people inside could go to would be reasonable. “We were going to go kill time at the gym today but I’d be down for going to the store to see what’s there. You want to come with, Beruka?”

“I’d rather choke than have to set foot in that place without a reason to be there. You’re welcome to go with them, Vani, but I’ll stick with what I had planned.” Beruka took a big step towards the door, but when Kjelle tried following her she pushed her away. “No, you stay here and go with. I’m sure that Effie’s ready to go right now.”

Stunned at how she’d actually been pushed back, Kjelle looked towards Effie who nodded at her. “We were thinking of heading there before lunch, just in case they decide to close early like usual, so if you’re coming it’s best to just stick with me. I’ve got to head back to the room to get Elise ready to go before we go to the store, but you’re welcome to join me for that part. Promise she won’t kick you out if she sees you in there.”  
“Trust her, Effie’s not one to lie to you about things.” Stepping towards the door once more, Beruka gave a nod of confidence towards Kjelle, who returned the gesture before smiling at Effie. “The two of you have fun while you’re out, and if you buy anything make sure it’s something Camilla would find use with. She enjoys gifts from us if given the chance.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Kjelle replied, not entirely sure what she’d be expected to get for Camilla when the woman could easily get anything she wanted for herself. “Go have fun at the gym and I’ll catch you later, maybe with something for us to share if there’s anything I think we’d want, not just Camilla.”

Effie didn’t say anything until the door had closed on the two of them still in the dining hall, and when she did talk she set the record as straight as she could. “I know what Beruka was referring to with the gift comment, and I don’t think it’s something either of you would be interested in for yourselves. I’ve had to be the responsible adult making those purchases before, I can tell you that I don’t see you as the type of person to want that type of thing.”

“Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad if Beruka thinks I’d get it for Camilla,” Kjelle replied, her mind focusing on the possibility of needing to pick out some clothing or jewelry to appease the woman that had opened her arms to offer her a job without question. She was fairly certain that Camilla would enjoy something flashy or gaudy, not anything that she’d personally find tasteful, but she knew that, since they were bringing Elise along, she’d have someone to ask for assistance if she found she needed it.

The first hint that this “company store” wasn’t what she was envisioning it to be was how distant it was from the rest of the buildings they’d been hanging around. It was close to what Kjelle assumed was the back wall of the Complex, a large building that had a fenced-in path leading towards one of its entrances. She could have asked about why that was, but Elise and Effie were more or less dragging her along at that point, Elise going on about how she was excited to get to buy some snacks for a movie night she was having later and Effie throwing out suggestions for what they could possibly end up getting. The second hint came when they went inside and saw that it was in fairly poor shape, just like so much of the Nohrian capital outside of Krakenburg’s walls, and the third hint went hand-in-hand with that, as there was a large wire fence separating part of the building’s interior, and on the other side were drably-dressed men and women, doing their shopping at the same time they were.

Seeing those people in what looked like work clothes and looking like they were tired and overworked made Kjelle nearly stop in her tracks as she started looking around the store, her blood running cold as it hit her that she was somehow on the “good” side of the corporation, through sheer luck. She and O’wain could have ended up getting roped into working for Garon Corporation as manual laborers, not as companions for some of the boss’ children, and if that had been the case, the chances of them ever finishing what they’d come for would have been next to zero. They could have been on the other side of that fence, looking like they hadn’t slept or bathed in days and like their paychecks weren’t going to pay for much of anything at all. She could have been someone over there, staring back at Elise and Effie and whoever they would have brought in if not her, wishing that she’d had the luck to be on that side of the fence for a change.

“Don’t make too much eye contact with them, they’ll try to guilt you into feeling sorry for them for their position,” Effie said with a whisper, her eyes downcast as she spoke. “As easy as it is to feel bad for them, we can’t feel bad for all of them at once, it’ll never end well for everyone on this side.”

“I like to pretend they’re not here, or if I can’t I just remember that they help my father have the money to provide everything for us.” Elise had a cheery tone to her voice, almost as if she was ignorant to how rude she sounded with her reminder. She seemed so friendly and kind, but Kjelle understood that she was speaking from a position of privilege and wouldn’t ever get why she was actually being insensitive. “Someday we’ll make it so that there doesn’t have to be a fence in our store but that day’s not going to be while my father’s in charge.”

“I don’t think I get why there has to be a fence in here to begin with, but if you think it’ll go away someday I think that’s better than it needing to be here always.” Shaking her head at how lucky she was to be standing on the side where she was, Kjelle began looking around the store again, trying her best to not look too much more at who was on the other side of the fence. Her eyes caught a glimpse of another person on their side, someone that Elise also seemed to see because she waved in their direction, but she was ignored.

The choice to investigate who was in there was not one that Kjelle wanted to make, but seeing who it was meant that she’d be further away from the fence, and that was something she needed for her mental sake. She apologized to the others for potentially disappearing on them before walking away, following the head that was intentionally weaving through aisles to get further away from her. There was going to be a point where dodging her wouldn’t be possible any longer, and she hoped that when it came to that point, she could clearly see who she was following.

Of all the people it could have been, she wasn’t expecting one of the Nohrian siblings to be who it was, yet when he turned around and she could see a face she’d only seen in a doorway before taking her best friend from her, she had the regret of choosing to tail him around the store. “Excuse me, but I don’t believe Camilla’s here, are you certain you should be here right now?” Leo spat, his mouth turned in a scowl that seemed to grow deeper as he continued with, “I could call her right now and inform her that you’re here _stalking_ me, do you think she’ll keep that to herself? The answer is no, she will not, and you’ll be jobless.”

“I wasn’t aware that Camilla needed to know where I was all the time, when she told me that I can be places I want to be, as long as I’m around when she needs me.” Talking back to this man was not a good idea, but Kjelle wasn’t going to take his attitude without dishing some back. She wasn’t a quick thinker, but glancing around her she noticed that they were in the corner with the personal products, and so she grabbed the closest box of tampons that she could and held it up. “And right now she’s sent me to get these for her, since…well, you’re a guy, you probably don’t understand.”

“Ugh, I would prefer never to have to think about my sister having functions of that sort,” he said with a shudder, averting his eyes from the box. “It’s a miracle she still experiences those cycles, given how much she chooses to sleep around with any man she seduces, but—” He was cut off by the box hitting him in the face, taking him by surprise. “—excuse me, but did you just throw that at me? The audacity!”

“I threw it at you because that’s no way to talk about your sister, let alone any woman in general. What if I decided to start talking bad about you to someone who knows you, but without you being around to defend yourself?” It wasn’t that she was going to do that, or even that she’d thought about doing that before, but Kjelle didn’t care for when people were rude without having the object of their disdain right in front of them. She loved letting whoever it was that she didn’t like know exactly how she felt, whether with her words or with her fists; it was a nasty habit, but it wasn’t something she was going to drop anytime soon. “I think you need to grow up and not be a snot-nosed baby about women having periods and being confident in who they are.”

“Please, my issue here is that this is my sister we’re speaking of. I’d rather not think about what happens with any part of her body at any given time, thank you very much.” A pause, while Leo bent down to pick up the box that had hit him in the face, and once it was in his hand it threw it back at Kjelle, who caught it without any issue. “Er, you weren’t supposed to catch that like that, you were supposed to let it hit you so I could get my revenge.”

She shrugged. “Sorry to burst your bubble, but not all of us are horrible at dodging simple boxes coming at us at a low speed. Maybe you need to get a key to the gym and start working out in there.”

“Whatever, someday I’ll get payback on you, miss Vani.” The way he choked out her name showed that Leo wasn’t confident that was actually what it was, and if she hadn’t been waiting for when he name-dropped her she might have made it obvious it wasn’t actually her name. Her faked smile at hearing it made him straighten up his posture and try towering over her, even though she retaliated by reaching her full height as well, them coming out more or less even. “Now if my sister is actually, ahem, going through that time of the month, why don’t you buy her something she’ll appreciate? I’m certain she’d enjoy a nice bottle of a liquor of your choice to dull the pain.”

This had to be a test, but alcohol wasn’t something that Kjelle had spoken to Camilla about and she didn’t want to make a wrong choice by agreeing or disagreeing with what Leo had said. Even with that issue, there was the problem that she was certain she wasn’t old enough to purchase it anyway, and trying to illegally buy something might have been even stupider than lying about who she was in the first place. One of these options was wrong, one was right, and the other was what she needed to do, and it took a lot of mentally convincing herself she was doing the right thing to say what came next: “I can’t buy her anything like that, they’d take one look at my paper and turn me away.”

“You’re underage?” Leo seemed shocked to hear her admit that, and her slow nod had him cracking up in rough laughter. “How cute, you try to be some fierce little monster but you’re just a baby, you can’t buy anything for the woman who took you in and you still expect her to take care of you!”

“Why are you treating her like this, Leo, you’re barely old enough yourself.” Elise jumping in with a giggle was enough to get both people in the conversation to jump before looking to her, one smiling in her direction while the other had their typical deep scowl. “I know that I shouldn’t be getting involved in this, but I know that when you turned eighteen you were more worried about other things that became legal, not buying your big sister drinks.”’

“Go back to whatever you were doing before this, I don’t need to take this nonsense from you right now,” he replied, hoping his glare he was giving his sister would be enough to get her to scurry away. It wasn’t, because she stood on the other side of the closest shelves and continued giggling. “Elise, please, do you want me to inform Father that this is how you’re spending your time? Antagonizing your brother in the middle of the company store while some newbie is risking being fired for insubordination if she came to buy something she legally cannot?”

Rolling her eyes over the sound of Elise’s laughing growing more intense, Kjelle made sure to set one part of that story straight. “Camilla didn’t send me here for anything, you idiot, I just came up with something to tell you to get you to stop being such a prick. She’d get it if I told her I couldn’t buy her a drink because I’m not old enough yet, I’ve got a few more weeks until I am old enough though so it really doesn’t matter that much.”

“So you chose to lie to me?” It was obvious Leo was not going to leave this conversation alone as long as he had opportunities to try and make Kjelle pay for what she’d done when she threw the box at him. “You’re disgusting, Vani, and I’m glad I chose to bring Odin in instead of you. I can’t fathom having to put up with you and your behavior regularly, and I hope Camilla smartens up and gets rid of you sooner rather than later.”

“She won’t, but okay, you keep being upset over something dumb and I’m moving on with my day. See you later, Leo.” Giving him a very brash and quick wave, after throwing the tampon box at him a second time and watching it make a clean connection with his face once more, Kjelle turned on her toes and headed back towards the door, not caring that she was leaving Elise and Effie behind by doing so. It wasn’t that she wanted to blow them off, but the idea of making Leo suffer in his own anger was impossible to resist and she could always explain that to Effie later. She didn’t go far once she was outside of the store, looking over at the fence that separated their side of Krakenburg from the rest, her mind going back to the stroke of luck that had her where she was rather than where those poor people were.

She was surprised that the people standing outside of the store on the other side of the fence were actively talking about what they’d heard happen when they were inside doing their shopping. There were people laughing as they shared the news of hearing some stranger tell off the son of the man who was virtually enslaving them with his brutal work schedule. They were finding a bit of humor in their lives with her behavior, and could she really feel bad about what she’d done if others were enjoying it? No, and if she was being honest it wasn’t like she’d feel bad about what she’d done anyway. She was the daughter of two people who stood their ground and occasionally made people pay verbally or physically for being stupid, she wasn’t going to ever be made to regret holding her own against anyone. That was especially true when it came to privileged punks who thought they were better than her despite not actually knowing her.

As bad of an idea as it was, she kind of hoped that she’d be able to face Leo again like that someday, and that maybe she’d have more of an audience for it, whether it were Camilla or Beruka, or even O’wain. Thinking about her friend made her sigh, as seeing Leo in the store had made her hope he was there with him, but he was alone and that meant she didn’t have the chance to see her friend right then. He had to be okay, Leo had talked about him, but she had no idea what he was up to or if he even missed her half as much as she missed him. The Krakenburg Complex was somewhere that very few people got to be on the good side of, but once they were there, it was rather isolated and lonely, and definitely not the kind of place Kjelle wanted to spend too much her time. They needed to find Inigo and get him out of there quickly, or else she felt she’d lose her mind keeping up appearances she’d never asked for in the first place.

Her mind focused on the task she’d agreed to take part in, not on the silly events that she’d gotten roped into by trying to solve that problem, Kjelle decided she’d head back over to the gym and hope to catch Beruka still there. If she wasn’t, that would be fine and she’d just go back to the place she was currently staying and meet with anyone who had gathered there. “As long as no one decides to jump out at me and try to start something, I should be fine,” she told herself with a confident nod, taking a quick pace to get back to places she’d gotten familiar with over the past couple weeks. Walking by herself, she found that she had the time to really figure out where it was she was going and where it was she’d been, and find some alleyways and side streets to explore the next time she had the chance.

Upon getting to the gym’s door, she found it locked with no sign of there being anyone inside aside from a single light on that she could barely see through one of the windows. It was a risk to assume it was Beruka inside, but as long as it wasn’t the someone she’d just had a fight with in the store she didn’t really care who it could be. Her fists pounded on the door, begging whoever was on the other side to let her in because she didn’t have a key of her own, but after several minutes of no answer she was ready to turn back and resign herself to being back under Camilla’s wing with no chance of alone time.

“You trying to get inside too?” a voice asked from above, and when Kjelle craned her neck back to see who it was she saw Niles sitting up on the roof, waving down at her. “What a shame, Beruka isn’t going to let you in because she thinks you being desperate is actually me being desperate!”

“Why are you here, shouldn’t you be defending your little boyfriend or something?” Kjelle retaliated, remembering that this man was one of Leo’s companions and was the one responsible for groping her the first time she’d come to the gym, so he wasn’t going to be treated with respect. “He’s going to have a story to tell you about how he got put in his place by a weak little girl today, which wouldn’t have happened if your face had been there for me to hit instead.”

He stared down at her with his one uncovered eye, unblinking and focused squarely on her face. “I’m sorry, but Leo told me that today he wanted to do his shopping on his own and that Odin and I needed to find things to do. Which reminds me, Odin was looking for you, he wouldn’t shut his trap about how much he misses you. I told him you were outside the Complex and that he was welcome to check for you, to get him off our backs.”

“You sent Odin on a mission into a city he barely knows to go looking for me?” Her hands curling into fists that she’d punch Niles with if he were closer, Kjelle wanted nothing more for him to come down and square up with her. Sure, he was taller than her, maybe not physically stronger than her but definitely craftier than her, and he had to have years of fight experience under his belt that she was missing, but she so badly wanted to get to punch him until he bled or cried for mercy. No one was allowed to misdirect her friend without being around to steer him back into the right direction, and she would risk losing her position if it meant defending him. “You’re going to go get him, right? He’ll get killed or lost if he doesn’t have someone bring him back!”

Niles waved his hand dismissively, brushing the suggestion away as if he’d considered it and chosen to ignore it. “He knows his way back, we’ve gone out enough together for him to have a pretty good idea of where he is in the city around here. As long as he doesn’t go past the third dive bar around the corner, he’s good.”

“Third dive bar…? What are you talking about, Odin doesn’t drink, why would he be going to bars with you? You’re a sleazy guy but you wouldn’t force him into doing something he doesn’t want, I don’t think.” This was getting messier by the second and Kjelle’s desire to bash Niles’ face in was not subsiding even slightly, especially not now that she knew he was at least introducing him to places he wouldn’t want to go.

“He’s an excellent wingman, even if his job is to remind his drunken pal that he can’t hook up with anyone at the bar because he’s already got someone at home.” Niles could tell that Kjelle wasn’t buying what he’d just told her, based on how her face had scrunched up at visualizing what he’d said, so he jumped down and grabbed her wrists before she could swing a punch in his direction. “Believe me, sweet Vani, when I say that he hasn’t had a sip of any drinks I’ve had, and that he’s only there to be my compass when I need it, something he has proven to be excellent at.”

“I could do without your grubby hands touching me, but whatever, I’ll believe you when I hear this come from his mouth. I doubt that Odin’s ever actually stepped foot inside any bars around here, especially not with you.” Her eyes shifting up to meet his single one staring back at her, Kjelle winced when she felt his grip tighten around her wrists, and she tried pulling away from him to no avail. “Come on, all I know about you is that you’re one of Leo’s guys—and trust me, I don’t get along with him any more than I get along with you—and that you’ve felt me up in front of Beruka, and she’s got a grudge against you from before that. I don’t have any reason to need to believe what you say.”

“Odin would be quite disappointed to hear you talking bad about men so dear to his heart, what a shame that you can’t step down from this self-appointed protector role to understand that you’re being unreasonable.” Tutting as he shook his head, Niles lifted a single finger out of his grip on each of her wrists, and that shift alone was enough for her to break her arms out of their prison, but he dodged when she took a swing towards his face. He wasn’t so lucky to miss her kick that followed, her having already predicted that he’d try to avoid her blow, and she stepped away from him after he was left clutching his side from how hard he’d been kicked.

Now that he was not going to leave her alone if she stayed, getting into the gym was just not going to be possible anymore; as much as she wanted to get inside and get to kick back with Beruka, it seemed like going back to the room and doing something there was going to have to be the final choice of what to do. While she walked back, she could hear some of the things Niles had said replaying in her mind, about how he’d sent her friend outside of the Complex to look for her, about how they went out to bars together, about how he had men dear to his heart. None of those things sounded like the O’wain she’d gotten to know over the past few years, but this wasn’t O’wain she was dealing with now. He must have fully committed to the Odin persona he’d been given and was running with it as far as he could, even if it meant making decisions he wouldn’t have otherwise.

And now she was there, making the Vani persona she’d been forced into an exact copy of the person she’d been back home, because that was her comfort zone and she wasn’t going to leave it, appearances be damned. These people would all be calling her the wrong name for as long as they’d know her, but she’d never stop being Kjelle, not for anything.

* * *

Word of what Kjelle had done that day never made it to Camilla’s ears, or if it did she didn’t bring anything up with her about it, not even after a few days had passed. “I’m so thankful that you’ve learned how to spend your time without me doing things that aren’t laying around here, or worse, inviting people in that have no business being at Krakenburg,” she told Kjelle one morning after their typical wake-up ritual of hair brushing and pretending to be asleep. “You and Beruka have taken to being such great friends and you’ve learned so much from her in such a short time.”

“It’s hard not to learn from her when she’s the only person, other than you, that I see every day.” She hoped that she didn’t sound too bitter by saying that, but Kjelle wanted to prove the point that she really didn’t have much in the way of contact with anyone else. “When does the point come where other people actually, uh, want to talk to me or something?”

“That comes as you get to know them better, it’s nothing that we arrange for you. Right now, with the changes that we’re trying to get started within the company, it’s a bit difficult to see some people but others are always around. Why, I’m sure if we walked over to the gathering room right now we could find someone sitting in there!” Camilla mentioning the gathering room was the first instance of Kjelle hearing about it, and her blank stare in response must have informed Camilla of that oversight. “Goodness, you’ve been here over three weeks and you’ve never been in there? Beruka darling, we’ve got ourselves some plans for today!”

While Beruka grumbled her way into the conversation, not interested in following through with whatever Camilla was about to tell her they were doing, in a room not that far from theirs a similar conversation was being held. “You know, camping out by the gym every day trying to gain access when you lost your key fair and square may not be the best course of action,” Leo said, looking directly at Niles as he shook his head from where he was perched on the arm of a raggedy couch. “I know that you want to have a face-off with Beruka to get it back, but patience may be key on this one. Patience, and being in the right place at the right time. Why don’t you find somewhere new to wait for her?”

“Because I know she goes to the gym almost every day and it’s my best chance of getting to get my key back, why don’t you come with me sometime to see that I know what I’m talking about?” Without losing his balance from his perch, Niles carefully lifted a leg from under him and stretched it, before tucking it back for support. “What would you suggest instead, going to the rec center and hoping she walks in there? She hasn’t been in that place since the day of the arrests, which happens to be the day I lost my key to her, funny how they’re related like that.”

Where he was sitting on the edge of the bed, blanket covering himself like a robe because he was cold in the freezing room that neither of the others seemed to mind, O’wain—actually, the proper name would have been Odin because that was how he was mentally referring to himself at all times—was listening to the two, trying to decide whose side he was on. “I think you should come with us to the rec center today, Niles,” he commented once he’d made that decision. “I could use someone else to go through the library with that won’t find a book in a minute and spend the rest of the day reading.”

“Or you could come to the gym with me and see if you can get Beruka to give me my damn key back,” Niles retorted, raising a good point but one that wasn’t going to get him very far, not when Leo was still looking at him with disappointment in his eyes. “Okay, the two of you win this one, I’ll take a break from fighting this fight for one day and spend it with you instead. I’ve got to have a punishment, though, if this patience thing works and I’m able to get my key back following your rules, not my own.”

“Everything I can think of wouldn’t be considered a ‘punishment’ in your book, thanks to your love of danger and more…risqué activities.” Coughing at the second part of what he’d said, Leo turned to where Odin was sitting and pulled the blanket off of him, exposing him to the chilled air in the room. “You know, putting a shirt on at lights out would make you less likely to freeze like this when you wake up. Haven’t you ever used your brain to come up with solutions like that, hm?”

“I have thought about that, but the problem with doing that would, you know, mean going to sleep with a shirt on, and the problem with _that_ is that every night I kind of end up having to take it off anyway, and by the time I’d be able to put it back on it’s more of an inconvenience that anything.” Odin was trying not to shiver, and he was also trying not to look at Leo as he was explaining the issue to him because he knew he was directly responsible for part of said issue. “Really, this would all be solved if you would let it be warmer in here, I know it’s warm out but it isn’t that warm at night.”

“The temperature stays as is in here, there’s no reason for it to be changed to make one person happy.” Getting up from where he was sitting, Leo walked over to where the air conditioner unit was located, tapping it a few times with his foot to get it to shut off. “But until you’re dressed I supposed we can do without it on.”

Odin’s face lit up at the kind gesture. “You’re the best Leo, seriously.”

“I’m trying to get you to stop shaking like a baby, you’re horrendous at hiding how cold you really are. Put some clothes on so we can get on with our day and pretend this never happened.” That was enough motivation to get Odin to do as told, not minding that the other men were in the room with him as he completely changed his clothing, immediately warming up once he was properly dressed. He must have taken too long to get ready, as Leo was displeased as usual once he told them that he was done. “You’re wasting our time with how slow you are, Odin. Be glad we’re just going to the rec center and not, for instance, going to meet up with Xander. He wouldn’t be pleased with your tardiness.”

“Yes, Odin, consider how you being slow would make our dear Leo look bad to his older brother if that’s where we were going.” Sounding smug with no reason to be doing so, Niles got down from his perch to drape himself over Odin’s shoulders, putting his hands on his face and rubbing his reddened cheeks. “If you want to keep your job here, you need to make sure you’re making Leo look his best at all times.”

Rolling with the physical contact as if it didn’t bother him at all, Odin glanced towards Leo and saw that he was watching them impatiently, waiting for the two of them to get around to heading out. It was several minutes later before they were stepping out the door, the world around them completely empty as usual, and like he tended to be Leo was pushing them to get to where they needed to go faster than they were currently going. “If we dawdle too much we’ll make it there after others have and be forced to face them in conversation, and I can tell you right now that I have no interest in making small talk with assistants that are star-struck by my presence.”

“You act as if people actually want to talk to you at any time,” Niles replied, his arms still wrapped around Odin without there being any kind of fuss kicked up about it. “And you also act as if people go to the rec center on a regular basis, when it’s just the two of you in there all the time. That library is a large turn-off, it’s not anywhere anyone wants to be.”

“T-there’s more to the building than the library, you know!” Leo’s tone was incredibly defensive, as if he’d just taken what Niles had said as a personal attack. “You know that better than most of us, seeing as you’ve swindled many a person at the pool tables. Plus you had your duel with Beruka in there and that certainly wasn’t in the library.”

“She’s a fierce competitor and I’m eager for the day where I can have a rematch to get my key back.” Sighing happily, Niles pressed his cheek into Odin’s and added, “And whenever that rematch happens, we’ll have our new friend there watching us to cheer us on. Isn’t that right, Odin, you’ll root for us when I get my key back?”

“I mean, I wouldn’t be rooting for some lady I don’t know, so yeah I guess that means I’d be rooting for you.” Odin had heard a lot about this Beruka person, but he hadn’t once met her and wasn’t exactly looking forward to when that would happen. Based on how Niles loved talking about her, she must have been someone with fangs for teeth, nastily-narrowed eyes that glared daggers all the time, and no positive traits to her personality to speak of. But if that was the case, why was he so insistent on fighting with her over things, and trying to have more interactions with her? It didn’t make sense if that was actually the case, but he was too unsure of how Niles would react if he called attention to it. “When do you think you’ll have this duel, anyway?”

“No idea, it’s been a work in progress for weeks now. She’s been so focused on showing her new girlfriend around that she hasn’t had time to lose to me to give my key back.” That was when Niles finally let go of Odin, only to jump a couple paces ahead of the men and turn to walk backwards, his one eye shining as he recalled something to share with the group. “On the topic of that girlfriend, who would’ve guessed that she’s just as disinterested in flirtatious advances as Beruka is? What a joke for poor Camilla, two companions who don’t share even a drop of her lustful desires!”

“Wait, hold on, girlfriend? You’re not talking about Vani, are you?” Odin’s eyes had widened as he was listening to what Niles was saying, thinking about how he knew that Kjelle was stuck with Camilla and that she was the only person he could be talking about. “She wouldn’t start dating someone after barely knowing them, she’s not that kind of person!”

“I couldn’t care less about her as a person, if we’re being honest. She runs her mouth too much and likes to fight far too often for someone in her position.” As he said that, he looked to Leo for confirmation that he was speaking the truth, and when he got a single nod the expression on Niles’ face became one of feeling vindicated. “You see, Odin, she’s picked fights with both of us for no reason at all, and yet you’re going to try defending her against me while I’m saying she’s Beruka’s girlfriend?”

“Look, it might not be the smartest thing to do right now but yeah, I think I am going to defend her from what you’re saying. I know her well enough to know that she’s not dating anyone, period, and that she probably won’t ever.” He could barely imagine Kjelle trying to flirt with someone, much less actually dating them, so he knew that what Niles was saying was far from the truth; however, he was sure that this was just being brought up to get him heated and make him look like a food, and he was falling right for the bait. “You can hate her all you want but just don’t tell lies about her, okay? She’s been my friend for a long time.”

“Around here, there’s no reason to be protective of others that aren’t those you live with,” Leo told him, trying to de-escalate the situation before yet another fight got started. “I wouldn’t defend any of my siblings if you tried telling me about things they’d done, you don’t need to defend your friend who likes talking with her fists rather than proper words.”

“But if I don’t defend her, who will?” Odin wanted an answer and he wasn’t going to get one, or if he did it wasn’t going to be one he wanted to hear, so he sighed and dropped the topic right there. Niles, taking that as a victory that he’d earned, decided to spend the rest of their walk saying things about her that he had to drown out by covering his ears with his hands, something that he was told was incredibly childish once they’d gotten to the rec center and Leo had unlocked the door to let them in. Just like every other trip they’d made over there since he’d become part of the team, the first place they went was to the library, through heavy doors that never seemed to be fully closed when one approached them—something that Odin thought was neat about the place, but Leo constantly grumbled about.

Once they were in the library the complaining kicked up about what they were going to do while they were there. “You know I’m never one for sitting around reading, finding my place on the page is always so difficult when I only have one eye to see with,” Niles grumbled, running a hand across the spines of several different books. “Perhaps I could spend my time waiting in the entryway for anyone who may join us? I’ll make for an excellent way to alert you to any unwanted visitors.”

“Do whatever you want, Niles, just make sure that you stay out of trouble while you’re doing it.” Leo had already grabbed a book and had started reading it while still standing in front of the shelf, so he wasn’t able to see the excitement that Niles showed in being given permission to go keep watch. He walked around in front of the shelf a bit before closing the book and tucking it back where he’d picked it up from. “Already read, as I expected by the familiarity of the foreword. I doubt there are more than a couple dozen books in this library that I haven’t read at this point, what a shame that we never seem to get new ones.”

“The newest book I’ve found in here so far has been almost half as old as me, so I think you’re right.” Speaking in agreement not to get back into good graces but because he really hadn’t found anything newer than a decade old, Odin was in the process of trying to find a book for himself to read, but the only one that caught his eye was one on the history of Nohr. He was pretending to be someone native to the country, so it would only make sense if he touched up on the facts about the place, but doing that in front of Leo seemed risky at best. Committing where that book was to memory, he continued looking around and found a book on world countries instead, something that was much easier to get away with reading.

After he’d pulled it off the shelf and taken it over to a table, he assumed he’d be able to start flipping through the pages and see the Nohrian outlook on different countries around the world, but Leo was right there next to him with his own book, not reading it but rather looking at what Odin had grabbed. “That’s a difficult one to get through, with the censorship it’s been put through to be ‘appropriate’ for our people,” Leo said, opening the cover of the book to show Odin that there was a note about how some entries had been modified. “A shame, if we’re being serious, because learning about what exists outside of Nohr that isn’t Hoshido has always been something I’ve wanted to do.”

“No kidding, that’s kind of why I grabbed this one. I thought maybe I’d get my first actual chance to learn a thing or two about places that aren’t here, but if this is edited who knows how much of it is real.” Keeping up with the lie about being a native was hard in that moment, because Odin had learned quite a bit about countries in the world through his years of schooling, and he was interested in seeing what kind of modifications the publisher had made to the entries on Ylisse and Ferox in specific. Pretending that he’d never heard of those places and reading the pages on them wouldn’t be as entertaining, but he figured he might be able to get a chuckle out of Leo by commenting on them and so he decided to take that chance and go for it.

The book was not lying when it said that it had been modified, because the pages about the two countries dear to his heart were altered almost to the point of making them undesirable to anyone who’d consider living there. On the flip side, compared to those two, Plegia seemed like a wonderful place, something that made Odin’s stomach turn to read through; he had never been to Plegia and hadn’t heard much about it outside of history lessons, but the one thing he knew from his family was that people from the country had been responsible for the murder of his aunt, someone who’d died long before he was born. “If I were ever to leave Nohr, I’d like to see the Plegian deserts for myself,” Leo said, glancing at the page Odin had his book open to before he could even read a word. “I have my doubts that they’re as great as this book claims, but it’d be a sight to see.”

“It’d be interesting to go see, that’s for sure.” Not able to try and steer him into wanting to see either of the other countries listed, one infinitely more than the other, Odin turned the page and began reading about some other country he’d never been to, visibly relaxing once he wasn’t faced with lies about the place he’d grown up. This was already turning into a disaster, because he couldn’t tell how much of what it was saying was the truth about anywhere he didn’t personally know, but he did know that it’d be fun to go back through it sometime when Kjelle was around to show her what it said about her home countries.

He turned the page again, finding a map of several countries within one continent that he was sure he’d find information about in the book if he kept going, but he started tracing the outline of the landmasses with his finger, thinking as he did. He’d gotten so focused on getting into Nohr for one reason in particular, and now he was sitting in some library straying further from his goal every moment that passed. Time had been somewhat fuzzy since their arrival at Krakenburg, but Odin was certain that he’d been wasting more time than he needed to getting cozy with the person he was now working for and his fellow coworker. How was he going to leave this position once he got through to his cousin that he needed to go home? Maybe that was that how Inigo had gotten trapped there in Nohr in the first place, not wanting to leave the position he’d stumbled into when he got locked in the country’s borders?

“Deep in thought about something, it seems. What, are you planning to research how to travel outside of Nohr to take me to…” Leo’s voice trailed off as he tried to read the name of the continent Odin had been tracing, but he couldn’t find it anywhere on the page, every instance of it covered with a black box that obscured the letters. “Ahem, it may be best if you choose not to take me to wherever that might be, it could become a disaster if it’s censored that heavily.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, I guess it would be a bad idea, but that wasn’t what I was thinking about, even if a trip would be interesting in the future.” Turning the page to move past the map and that embarrassing lapse into his thoughts, Odin was stopped from reading what was on the new pages by Leo slamming the book closed on him. “What was that for? I was going to see if there was anywhere better than wherever that was to take you.” He was shushed as Leo pointed towards the door, where on the other side voices could be clearly heard, and he nodded in understanding. At the same time they got up and went to the door to see what was happening on the other side, Niles’ voice loud and commanding as he demanded something from whoever had come into the building.

“When Camilla said we’d see someone sitting in here, I was thinking maybe it’d be someone I hadn’t met before,” a voice belonging to someone they couldn’t see from their vantage point said, but both of them recognized who it was and reacted accordingly. Leo was grumbling and kicking at the door, cursing their luck that she’d chosen to show up, while Odin was trying his best to get to see his friend and not make it too obvious that he missed her dearly. “Guess this place is useless today, can we go somewhere else?”

“Calm down, I hear you over there getting eager to see your precious Vani, but charging in while Niles is holding a confrontation might end poorly for you.” Leo had grabbed Odin’s arm and was keeping a tight grasp on it, to keep him where he was currently standing while breathing heavily, so badly wanting to tackle his best friend for the first time in weeks. “We will enter once Niles has finished up, or once Camilla has told them all to knock it off.”

That was a solid plan, but it was one that was tossed aside almost immediately when the door was pushed open further, knocking the heavy wood into them both with enough force to send them both hitting the floor. “Damn it, I didn’t know anyone was going to be in _here_ , it seemed like it could be abandoned enough to hide from that guy.” Kjelle, naturally, had been the one responsible for the door opening, and now she was looking down at the two men she’d knocked over, one frustrating her and the other making her want to cry. “Look, will either of you forgive me for what I just did?”

As expected, one shook his head no while the other tried to get to his feet to accept her apology with a hug, being kept down on the ground solely because his arm was still being held. “I may not know you well, but I know you well enough to be aware that you’re only apologizing to Odin, not to myself, and that is simply unacceptable.” Leo narrowed his eyes as he looked at Kjelle, her not flinching despite his accurate read on her intentions. “If you are going to apologize to me, you should make it about our last encounter as well.”

“I wish I’d given you a bloody nose with that box so you could’ve made use of those tampons yourself, asshole.”

“And that’s only digging yourself a larger hole, what a tragedy. Wait until I get the chance to tell Xander about my sister’s choice in companion, he’ll march you out of here faster than you’d expect.” She was still unbothered by what he was saying, even though Odin was squirming where he was on the ground, not liking the possibility of losing her because of her attitude. “I’d suggest apologizing properly this time, unless you want to find a new job in a hopeless market.”

Rather than address what was being said to her, Kjelle turned her focus to Odin and offered him a hand to try and bring him to his feet. But thanks to how Leo was still holding onto him, as soon as he was partially standing all it took was a light tug to get him back onto the ground. “Come on, I didn’t do anything wrong, can I please stand up?” he asked, knowing that he was so close to a reunion yet so far from it. “I’m just going to hug her for a minute, maybe two, and then you can go back to fighting each other.”

“Vani, sweetheart, why are you in here mingling with these boys?” It was Camilla in the doorway now, the sounds of Beruka and Niles yelling pointed insults at each other slowly getting drowned out as she closed the door on all of them inside the library. “I said that the gathering room was on the other side of the building, did you get curious about this dusty place and decide to check it out instead?”

“No, she came in here to be a pain in my neck, but what else is new about the people you seem to attract?” Spitting his words at his sister like they were venom, Leo’s eyes shifted up to looking into Camilla’s, her sweet smile causing her corners of her eyes to crinkle just enough to automatically start calming him down. “I’ve warned her that I’m considering telling Xander about her behavior, but I don’t think the warning has clicked in her mind quite yet.”

“Anything you say to dear Xander about my lovely Vani will be ignored, she has done nothing wrong to anyone who matters, no matter what you claim.” Camilla’s smile tightened, her eyes crinkling even more, and Leo could feel the aggressive kindness she was trying to radiate towards him. “You must stop being such a nuisance to my companions, they never deserve the hatred you throw in their direction.”

Taking in a deep breath before forcing his words out, Leo coldly replied with, “She is the one who threw something at me. Not words, not hatred, an actual box. One with edges that could have injured me.”

“Vani, did you throw something at Leo?” Turning her attention to the woman next to her, Camilla waited until she saw a small shrug of Kjelle’s shoulders before she went back to looking at her brother with an amused expression. “Perhaps she did, and perhaps she didn’t, I’m not one to press into her methods. If she did, you most likely deserved what happened, and if you didn’t you’ll come to realize that lying is not the way to handle things.”

“You can’t take her silence as an answer over what your own brother is saying to you!” Leo let go of Odin’s arm at once, using both hands to try and spring up to face his sister at a higher level, but Camilla countered him with a well-timed foot to his chest, pushing him to the floor once more as the man next to him got to his feet and stood shakily next to Kjelle. “What was that for, Camilla? Doesn’t me being your brother give me any leverage in this conversation, or does her being your friend put her higher than me?”

“I’m merely expecting you to show some respect to your elders.” For a moment, it seemed as if she was speaking in reference to herself, but her gentle head-nod in Kjelle’s direction showed that she was in fact speaking of her—something that she was severely misguided about, and that Leo could have corrected her on had he wanted to keep fighting. But he already knew he was in hot water with his sister and her kindness had only so long of a fuse before it was gone, and he didn’t know how much longer she’d be staying nice to him. He gave an apology in their direction, forcing the words like they were physically hurting him, and Camilla allowed for him to stand before her, the argument effectively over.

She motioned for him to walk towards the shelves, smiling at him the entire time, and he did as demanded without question, her following behind him so that they could have a private conversation. That left Odin and Kjelle standing side by side, sizing each other up and making sure that nothing too crazy had changed about the other since the last time they’d been together. “It’s like you’ve been up in Ferox, except longer than that ever lasts,” he remarked, before tackling her into a hug that she didn’t want to break out of for as long as possible. “And there’s also been a lot more fighting while you’ve been gone, but you know that because you’ve been responsible for most of it.”

“I’m trying my best to not fight, but Leo’s face is just so punch-worthy and Niles grosses me out. You know he grabbed my thighs after you told him about my scars, don’t you?” Wrapping her arms around her friend to now trap him in the hug as well, Kjelle could feel all of the stress and stupidity of the past few weeks melting off her shoulders, knowing that despite everything she still had her friend. “You’re a dumbass but I love you anyway, Odin, I hope you know that.”

“H-hey, you don’t have to be so mean with the words,” he laughed, before adding, “and thanks for remembering the right name for me. I think I’ve fully taken on being this Odin guy, even if he isn’t actually who I am. What about you, have you embraced the Vani thing, or can I…do you want to still be Kjelle?”

Hearing her proper name for the first time in a long while made her feel a happiness hearing the fake name had stripped from her, something that she made sure she made clear when she answered him. “I want to be who I was born as, not this fake person that I’m expected to be here in Nohr. If you want to keep calling me Kjelle, or even Kay, you can do that and I’d appreciate it more than anything.”

“You want to be Kay, you can keep being Kay, I’m fine with calling you that.” Odin’s face had broken out in a large smile, and it was clear that he was struggling to keep himself composed in this reunion. “Here I was, thinking that you’d really decided that you’d go for using the name Subaki gave you, but you still haven’t come around to it, have you? I’ll keep calling you what I’ve called you since we properly met the first time, it means more to me than the name you’ve got now ever could.”

His voice was raising as he was getting more emotional about their conversation, something Kjelle knew could be dangerous if someone were to overhear them. “Let’s just get past the whole name thing and move on, I’ve got this feeling that we might not be as alone as we think we are right now.”

“Don’t get so worried, I know that we’ve got a bit of time to talk, but you’re right, we should get past the name thing. I’m Odin, you’re Kay when we’re together and Vani when anyone else is around, leaving it at that.” He gave a shaky sigh, one that exposed just how close he was to crying when he broke down into sobbing, burying his face in the curve of Kjelle’s neck. “I’m just so happy that this has gone so well so far, we could’ve died by now and we haven’t even come close!”

“Speak for yourself, the guys you’re with kind of want me dead and I feel the same about them.” As much as she’d like to pretend like making a dangerous enemy in Leo wasn’t going to be her downfall, Kjelle was incredibly aware that one wrong move with him would end badly for her and Odin both. She didn’t want to say that she might have overstepped a line somewhere, admitting fault wasn’t one of her strong points, but she did have something on the matter that she felt needed expressing, as a reminder of the temporary nature of their positions: “It doesn’t matter if they hate me though, we’re not going to be here forever and then we’ll never have to worry about them again.”

Odin lifted his head, tears trickling out of the corners of his eyes but his sobbing mostly finished. “I don’t think it’ll work exactly like that, Kay,” he said, blinking out the remaining tears as fast as he could. “I’d like it to, but I…kind of don’t think leaving Leo and Niles will really work out well for me, not out of the blue. I think I’ve figured out how Inigo got trapped here after he could leave, and it’s—“

“Speaking of your cousin,” she interrupted, him bowing his head to keep his thoughts to himself and show her respect as she spoke, “whatever happened to us finding him here? It’s been weeks and I haven’t seen him or the guy he’s supposedly working with, but I definitely know that Xander’s a real guy because, well, we heard his siblings talking about him. Do you think Inigo’s locked up somewhere for being a traitor and having ties to places that aren’t Nohr, and that’s why we haven’t seen him?”

“—what are you talking about, he’s around, you’re just not looking hard enough.” Thinking it better to stay on her topic rather than his own, Odin met Kjelle’s eyes with a determined glint in them. “I haven’t seen him myself, of course, but I know he’s around. Leo’s mentioned him a couple times, Niles talks about him maybe once a day, he’s just busy with something that Xander has going on. Why did you jump to thinking something was wrong with him?”

She hesitated on answering, knowing that it had been her lack of information that had caused her to make such a desperate leap to come to her conclusion. “I guess I just got worried, I’m clearly not having as great of a time here in Nohr as you are. Can we please work on finding him and getting out of here sooner rather than later? I’d like to be home for my parents’ birthdays, if not before that.”

“That’s a great thought and all, but getting out of Nohr isn’t going to be something easy we’re going to accomplish in a week or a month. I’m going to get us to talk to him at some point soon, I know when I’ll definitely get a chance but that’s next month, I guess?” Odin was struggling to remember what day it was, with so little rooting in the real world where they currently were. “Whenever it is, I’m sure it won’t be easy to convince Inigo to turn away from this life and go back to the one he had before, so we can’t say we’ll be done by the end of the year. Maybe we’ll be back on our way to Ylisse by next summer?”

His words were like a fist to Kjelle’s chest, and she forced herself out of their hug after hearing them. This hadn’t ever been addressed with her before, having to be committed to this charade for such a long period of time, and hearing Odin’s breakdown of how long this was going to take was making her feel sick. “I’m sorry, but next summer? You didn’t tell me that my parents wouldn’t know where I am for almost a year!”

“It’s just a guess, I thought this would be quicker too, otherwise I might’ve let Mom know what I was planning on doing when we went to Hoshido in the first place!” Closing his eyes and taking a few deep breaths to steady himself, Odin then said, “If you want to turn back and leave me here, you have every right to do it at this point, but know that I’ve missed you terribly since we got here and I’ll miss you worse if you go. We’re a team, Kay, and nothing’s changed about that, it’s just the length of time we’ll be here that’s changed.”

At that moment, she didn’t have anything else she wanted to say to him, nor did she want to address what he’d just brought up, so she did what any self-respecting woman would do in that situation: she opened the door and walked out of the library, making sure to pull the door tightly closed behind her. She could hear Odin calling for her, using the name he knew he needed to address her with when anyone else could hear him, and him calling her Vani made it easier for her to ignore him as she walked out and into whatever mess was waiting for her on the other side.

He, meanwhile, called out for her until he heard two sets of footsteps running towards him, the doors drowning out any noise from outside the library so he knew exactly who it was. “What has happened to you, making you scream like a wounded animal?” Leo asked, while Camilla had her lips pursed together silently as she looked around for where the other person they’d left there was located. “Did your little friend there prove that she’s a violent one by hurting you somehow?”

“She didn’t hurt me, she just walked out without saying where she was going and it surprised me. No big deal.” It _was_ a big deal, but Odin couldn’t properly explain what she’d done and why it bothered him without inevitably slipping up and exposing who either one of them actually were. “Knowing Vani, though, she’s probably looking for someone to yell at to vent her frustrations, so you might want to, uh, go find her,” he suggested to Camilla, who nodded with a sense of understanding but didn’t make any motions to go.

“Don’t look dumbstruck at the fact that my sister isn’t taking your directions, she has some unfinished business to attend to in here before she goes anywhere.” Leo’s statement made no sense to Odin, as it seemed like it would make more sense to come back to the business once everything else was settled, but he wasn’t going to question it. When he saw the siblings exchange a glance before giving each other a quick hug, Camilla whispering something into Leo’s ear before they split apart, that was when it began to make sense. Of course they’d have to hug it out after whatever conversation they’d been having between the shelves, but as Camilla left the library she blew a kiss in Odin’s direction, catching her brother’s eye as she did and winking at him before disappearing behind the heavy door.

Not sure what that display was about, Odin looked to Leo for any explanation, but he was caught up on something else entirely. “That damn Camilla, she wants to think that her companions are superior above all others, no matter what the truth actually is. And then she wants to flounce out of here as if nothing happened, just to go check on her ‘precious’ Vani, ugh! Makes me want to show her just how vile that girl is!”

“She’s not a bad person, you must have just gotten on her bad side or something,” Odin said, knowing that disagreeing with Leo probably wasn’t a good idea but not wanting to keep hearing more and more be said negatively about someone dear to his heart. “You’ll have to trust me on this, but she’s a great person once you get to know her. It’s just getting to know her that’s the problem.”

“And why should I trust you about this matter? It’s obvious that you’re saying this to defend her actions, you wouldn’t know what it’s like to be on her bad side.” Leo was not going to back down from his assertion that she was bad, but Odin didn’t have any way to convince him otherwise. Not without having to explain that he hadn’t always been one of her favorite people, and that their first meeting had been anything but smooth, but talking about an eleven-year-old named O’wain sitting at an airport alone and being run into an almost-ten-year-old name Kjelle who immediately blamed him for being in her way wouldn’t work in that situation.

He must have gotten too lost in thinking about that, as the next thing Odin was aware of was his hand being grabbed and squeezed tightly. “Don’t start coming up with lies you can try feeding me about your friend, whatever you have to say I won’t agree with until she shows me she’s a good person for herself.” Tugging at Odin’s hand until he acknowledged that he was being spoken to, Leo let go of him at once and turned to go back to what they’d initially come to the library for. “Now I shall resume reading, you can do the same or you can go elsewhere, what you do doesn’t matter to me right now.”

Something told him that deciding to try and find Kjelle for himself wouldn’t work, so he resigned himself to having to go back to reading the altered world map book out loud, to maybe make Leo not seem so upset with him. He hadn’t done anything except try defending his friend, so maybe on this one it wasn’t anything he’d done wrong, but rather it was Kjelle being difficult once again making things hard for everyone.

By the time they’d settled back down with their books and were reading once more, the entire ordeal had mostly left his mind, but when the door came open again Odin was expecting it to be Camilla or Kjelle there, both of them having some reason to re-enter the library. It was a surprise to see that it was someone who looked like an older, manlier version of Leo standing there in the doorway, his gloved hand motioning for one of them to come towards him. Without any words exchanged, Leo slammed his book closed and jumped to his feet, meeting his brother’s call, but Odin was too busy looking at the half-visible person standing behind the man in the doorway to care what the brothers were going to be doing,

Visible for the first time since they’d gotten there to Nohr, talking to someone who wasn’t able to be seen from that angle, was the exact person that Odin had come to find in the first place, and there wasn’t anything he could do about it except stare.


	5. A Long Awaited Reunion

The verbal lashing Kjelle received that night for what had been revealed that she’d done wasn’t too terrible, all things considered. As Camilla was trying to tear into her, breaking from her motherly persona to get downright angry, all she could think about was how she’d experienced far worse come from her own parents, who had never tried playing nice with her and were always ready to chew her out if they’d found out she’d done something wrong. In her mind, as she was hearing the accusations of being horrible and rude and a disgrace to the people of Krakenburg, were visions of her mother giving her the same exact list of things she’d done wrong, with her father there adding in whatever he felt necessary, before they’d start laughing and stop taking everything so seriously.

She knew there wasn’t going to be any laughter after Camilla was finished with her, but maybe a hug and a reminder that she was wanted there, and that was completely acceptable. This wasn’t the same as being punished by her parents, even if she appreciated their methods more than these ones, and she was fully understanding of that fact. “You are beyond lucky that you haven’t done anything news-worthy to get yourself removed from this place,” Camilla told her, her voice going back to its typically sweet and sultry sound. “I wish that you wouldn’t have picked fights with who you did, but alas what you’ve done you can’t exactly take back. Leo has forgiven you completely, that much I know, but he expects you to pay him back somehow for your mistreatment of him.”

“And what if I don’t do that? What if I decide I don’t want his forgiveness?” It wasn’t something she actually wanted, but Kjelle was fond of testing waters to make sure what boundaries she had in a situation. “Am I going to get kicked out then?”

“No, Vani, you won’t be kicked out, but Leo has my permission to make things difficult for you as long as you refuse to play nice.” That was when she opened her arms for her traditional hug, a gesture that Kjelle wanted to refuse but knew that refusal of would just lead to guilt-tripping by Camilla. “But let’s not think about that possibility and move on with our lives, there’s so much we can focus on that’s happier than petty squabbles with my younger brother.”

When she went into the hug she fully expected to be smothered in Camilla’s chest, but she was given the opportunity to stand tall in the embrace, rather than be pushed downward. It was different than previous hugs, but she was certain that the difference came in the timing of it all. Not like she minded, she hated the close facial contact with someone else’s chest and was thankful she wasn’t having to endure that again, but at the same time she wondered how much it was bothering Camilla to be respectful of someone’s boundaries on that matter. “Uh, I don’t mean to interrupt quality time, but someone’s at the door,” Beruka said, poking her head into the room with her eyes laser-focused on where Camilla was standing. “You two can hug it out later. They’re demanding that you come talk, Camilla.”

“That I come talk?” she repeated, letting go of Kjelle quicker than she’d intended to so that she could bustle past Beruka in the doorway and check on who was visiting them. “I’ll be back in a moment or two, play nice while I’m gone ladies.” Her delicate wave as she disappeared out of sight was laughable, but when Beruka walked into the room to take the place she’d vacated, the air in the whole place changed. Gone was the motherly feeling that had been present during the whole punishment, replaced with the cold presence of someone who didn’t seem to want to be where she was.

Yet, when Beruka said something next it was as if she’d wanted to be there the whole time. “I have something I want to ask you,” she started, catching Kjelle’s attention with her blunt way of bringing up her intentions. “It’s about your backpack next to your bed. That’s where all your belongings are stored?”

“Yeah, I didn’t really bring much with me when I left home and decided to try to make a life for myself around here.” Kjelle could count on her fingers how many outfits she’d packed when she’d originally left Ylisse, and even since becoming part of the Krakenburg family she’d maybe inherited one or two more outfits. She looked at Beruka, trying to figure out where she was attempting to go with this question, before telling her, “I didn’t have much back home anyway, so really I packed exactly what I needed. Why do you ask?”

“It seems like more than enough space for everything I’ve seen you wear. Where did you hide everything else you had?” The question came as Beruka got right next to her and stared into her face, unblinking as she did. “You didn’t have anything illegal that you had to discard before entering Windmere, did you? Weapons, perhaps?”

Up until she gave her suggestion for what had been hidden, Kjelle had begun to worry that Beruka had somehow put together her background and was trying to figure out where all of her stuff she’d originally had was left before faking her new life. Now that she knew where she was going with this interrogation, though, she could breathe easier. “I didn’t have anything else, don’t worry, and definitely no weapons. Why would you jump to that conclusion, do I look like the kind of person carrying around knives or guns in my bag when I go somewhere new? I’ve got my fists, thank you very much.”

“I saw the bag had a holster built into it and wondered why that was. Nothing important.” Backing up a single step, Beruka saw the look of confusion overtake Kjelle’s face, her trying to place where the holster she was referring to was. “It’s inside, on the back of the bag. A perfect place for a concealed weapon. That kind of bag would’ve done me good when I was…you know, using weapons as part of my job.”

It was hard not telling her that the bag had been used by someone who’d regularly carried a gun with them, because she didn’t know how likely a position like that would’ve existed in parts of Nohr. “I don’t know where the bag came from, my mother ended up with it one day and it sort of became mine after that. She might’ve gotten it from someone expecting her to have a gun on her, or maybe she got it because it was cute.” Shrugging, Kjelle hoped her lie of an explanation was believable enough to get Beruka to accept it.

Whether if it was or not, she was more hung up on the fact that it had a holster than anything else. “Your mother might have been a militia woman behind your back. That’s the way most Nohrians get their hands on weapons, through the military. It’s all done in secret, though, as our government leader doesn’t want uprisings happening against him.” Whatever Beruka was focusing on, she’d started drifting away from her, shaking her head after a few moments to reorient herself in the conversation. “It’s part of why the siblings here keep ex-criminals around them, because we know how to fight if needed.”

“And you thought I was here because of that, didn’t you?” Beruka nodded, and Kjelle felt herself relaxing more now that she knew she wasn’t digging herself a hole she wasn’t going to be able to escape from. “Ha, I’ve never actually fought someone with any kind of real weapon in my life, just my fists and my words. Camilla picked me because she saw something else in me, I guess.”

“You’re a strange one, Vani, but I think I see what she sees in you. A spirit that’ll…” Her voice trailed off as she heard Camilla loudly yell something excitedly in the other part of their home, and she chuckled. “It’ll do us all good in the end, I feel it. Either that, or it’ll help us get to where we’re going.”

Her head swiveling towards where Camilla’s yelling was continuing, Kjelle wanted to make a comment on what Beruka had just told her but decided it wouldn’t do her any good to try and unpack that statement. “She sure sounds excited about something out there, whoever’s at the door must have had something really important to tell her. Did you see who it was before you told her they were there, or did you send her out there blindly?”

“I knew who it was before I sent her. It’s fairly obvious who would come calling at this hour, or at least, it is to me. Would you be interested in seeing who’s there?” It was a question that didn’t need an answer, as Beruka had started towards the other room while she was asking it, and naturally Kjelle was there to follow her, curious about who Camilla was speaking with. As they entered the other room, it became clear that they weren’t going to get a direct view of who was there without being noticed, but as Camilla would move around excitedly as she spoke they could catch glimpses of the person at the door. “He hasn’t come around as much since the arrests happened, but it’s good to see him again.”

Mouthing the name of the man she knew she was looking at, all Kjelle could think back to was the conversations she and Odin had had before they’d come to Nohr, about how they were looking for his cousin and that was their primary goal. The man standing there wasn’t who they were looking for, but he was the person they’d find him with, so being so close to Xander without any idea of if his companion was there or not was frustrating at best. “Seems like he’s a loving older brother if he checks in on his sister like this,” she said after several split-seconds of being able to see him looking stone-faced while he spoke with Camilla. “Do you ever get to talk to him yourself, or is this about as close as you get?”

“I’ve spoken to him a few times, but not recently. Something’s happening, we all know it, and he’s having to focus on it. I’m waiting for the day where he lets his partners roam free once more, but until then I’ll be patient.” Her words were uninspiring yet cryptic, and Kjelle could tell that Beruka was hiding something that she knew with them. Before there was a chance to ask about that, she was going back towards the large bedroom, motioning for her to follow. “We’ll get our chance to speak with him properly someday, let’s leave the siblings alone for now.”

“That’s fair, I guess we can do that,” she replied, casting one last glance in Xander’s direction and committing his stern face to memory once more before she met up with Beruka in the bedroom, getting commanded to sit on the bed with a silent finger. “O-okay, what did I do to make you angry? Did I cross some line asking you what I did?”

“Of course you didn’t, I’m curious about something else about your bag.”

The holster that she’d seen get used a handful of times hadn’t been something Kjelle had expected to hear about, so she wasn’t sure what else Beruka would have to ask about. Aside from its clear former life as a police officer’s bag, there wasn’t much remarkable about it, and if there was then it wasn’t going to have a fun story attached to it like the holster could have. “Go ahead, I can tell you as much as I know about it but like I said, my mother gave it to me. It was hers before it was mine.”

“So she’d be the one who attached the patch to the front of it?” The question hit Kjelle harder than it should have, because now she needed to come up with an explanation for why, exactly, her supposedly Nohrian mother had given her a bag with a patch belonging to a foreign police force on it. Beruka noticed that Kjelle’s mind was coming up with some far-fetched reason but didn’t call her out on it, giving her time to find her words before pushing harder for an answer. “I’ve never seen a patch like that before, and I’ve spent a lot of time going through things smuggled into the country. Do you know what it says on it and what it means, or were you never told?”

“The patch on it? You mean that wasn’t part of the bag originally? I never knew.” She did know, she knew that she’d been in the room when Cordelia had sewn it onto the front of the bag for her, she knew that her mother had given her that as a gift not all that long ago. But she couldn’t say that without ruining what she’d been doing so well at keeping secret—although now she could turn the conversation away from what she had and to why Beruka knew she had it in the first place. “Wherever it’s from, I really can’t tell you, but why do you know I have it? Have you been going through my stuff?”

“I might have been, but don’t worry about me taking anything. I was merely checking to see if you were some Hoshidan spy, or here to try and destroy our lifestyle from the inside out. That doesn’t mean I thought you were one, I was ordered to do it by someone.” There was no reason to distrust what Beruka was saying, but hearing her talk about how she was ordered to snoop through someone’s belongings did feel wrong. “Everything is exactly as it was when you put it there, I am thorough in my investigating without being disruptive.”

Even if she wasn’t going to label Beruka as a liar for what she was telling her, it would have been wrong to claim that Kjelle wasn’t hurt by what she’d heard. This was someone she’d trusted and begun considering a friend telling her that she had been ordered to go through her things to make sure she was who she said she was—which she wasn’t, but there was no way that they’d find that out with what she had in her bag. All of her electronics and incredibly personal belongings had been left in Hoshido under Subaki’s care, and the only thing even remotely personalized was her bag itself, which she’d been able to successfully lie about. “Whoever told you to do it, I hope you were able to go back to them and tell them I’m exactly who you all think I am, because why would I hide anything from you guys?”

“Trust me, you’d be surprised.” Beruka’s answer was short and sweet, but didn’t give any clues as to what might have happened in the past to warrant this sort of behavior. “Now let’s figure out what we’re going to do while Camilla’s still occupied, there’s no telling how long she’ll be speaking with her brother.”

“Because we’ve always got to be doing something, I get you.” There was something that Kjelle wanted to do right then, but it wasn’t possible given that it involved listening in on that conversation happening in the front entrance to their little home, and the last thing she needed to do was raise suspicion by being insistent on doing that. The best she could do was let Beruka take the lead and plan whatever they were going to do next, and go from there.

* * *

It had been over a month since the trip was supposed to have ended, since two people returned home from Hoshido when four should have. Cordelia had excellently played the role of being unaware of what had happened to cause the other two to stay behind, and Severa had tried her best to keep up with the idea that they’d snuck off while at the airport and there had been no time to find them, but her smug facial expressions told everyone that there was more to it than what she said. No one could get a straight answer out of her, and she’d direct anyone who asked too many questions to her mother to talk to her instead, which meant having to face Cordelia and her insistence that the story she and Severa were telling was the whole truth.

One thing was for certain: the two had stayed behind in Hoshido for some reason, and now they needed to be brought back in any way possible. With a former Hoshidan prince on their side, it would’ve been assumed to be pretty easy, but when Takumi consistently refused to contact anyone for help (because, as he’d remind them, they had bigger problems to worry with than a couple of missing teenagers) it wasn’t going to be as easy as thought. “It’s to be expected, we’ve been looking for my brother for ten years, even with Takumi assisting us, we shouldn’t have jumped to the thought that he’d be able to do much more this time,” Lucina said with a sigh to the people sitting around the makeshift table at the police station, not a single one of them on duty but rather using the place as a good meeting area. “We’re never going to get any leads on any of this, and whose fault might that be?”

“I’m willing to guess you don’t want to blame the people who went missing,” the woman sitting right next to her replied, rolling her eyes as she spoke, “which would honestly be the best thing to do. They chose to pull this stunt, they’re the ones who we should be blaming for them being gone. But no, you’re going to blame everyone else because you can’t blame your family for doing things wrong.”

“That’s as far from the truth as you could get right now, Morgan, please don’t talk like that. I know that Inigo screwed up when he ditched me way back when, and I know that O’wain and Kjelle screwed up staying behind this time.” Tapping her fingers together in front of her face, Lucina looked around at the people that had gathered there for the meeting. Morgan and Cynthia had been mainstays at these meetings for as long as she could remember, having been close friends with Inigo back when they were young. As usual, there was a single representative from two different families that had also found somewhat close ties with her brother, this time being Brady and Yarne (although the four siblings they had between them were also around, just not at the meeting). Severa had been present for a little bit but had scurried off when the topic of going to Hoshido themselves to investigate had been brought up a little while earlier.

And lastly there was Takumi, looking unhappy with what was being discussed but also wanting to be supportive for the woman he cared about. “I’m glad you don’t blame my people for this behavior, you know as well as I do that they didn’t do anything wrong here. I mean, it might have been one or two of them that had done some convincing, but we can’t prove that.”

“If anyone convinced my brother to stay there, it’d be some lady, which makes sense knowing him! It’s just that I don’t know who’d be able to convince O’wain to abandon his mother and stay in Hoshido, and Kjelle…that girl’s been through enough as is, her making this choice doesn’t make sense.” Lucina’s fingers folded together as she brought her hands in closer to her mouth, closing her eyes as she thought about any possibilities that might have been overlooked. “I just don’t get it, they were both happy here in Ylisse and were just going to Hoshido for a visit, and now they’re gone like Inigo is.”

“Why’d ya have to bring O’wain and his mom up, now all I can think about is how she keeps goin’ over to Ma’s and cryin’ at her for hours, then Ma comes over to my place and cries at me about how she can’t do anythin’ to help.” Brady’s words came with a sniffle, as he rubbed at one of his eyes just thinking about his mother crying. “I hate seein’ Ma like that, and it’s all that kid’s fault. Don’t ya think he should’ve thought about how his mom would handle him bein’ gone before he left?”

“He was his mother’s world, she’s really distraught without him around,” Cynthia added in agreement, looking towards Brady with a smile to hopefully keep him from crying too much over what he’d said. “I know that we all enjoyed watching him grow up and be this goofy little guy, but his mom loved him most of all and she’s the most hurt by what he’s done.”

Lucina opened her eyes a crack and glanced at the two who had spoken, before letting her lids flutter shut once more. “Trust me, if she isn’t spending her time crying with miss Maribelle, she’s over at my parents’ house trying to piece things together with them. They all share that connection, losing a son to a trip to Hoshido, and it’s rough for all of them. For my parents for having to live through this again, and for Aunt Lissa because she’s living through it right now.”

“At least they have a support system that’s nearby,” Yarne remarked, his hands tapping all across the span of table directly in front of him. “My mom keeps calling and telling me that she’s getting calls a couple times a week from Kjelle’s parents, just because they’re so far away from everyone else and my mom’s the only one they really trust right now about all of this. I guess no one even told them that she was going out of the country, so they found that out by her coming up missing.”

“It’s strange that they weren’t told about her leaving beforehand, but I don’t think anything’s suspicious about that.” Morgan wasn’t even bothering to acknowledge who’d spoken, her eyes on Lucina and Takumi rather than anyone else. “I mean, if I was going to leave the country, unless I thought something seriously wrong was going to happen I might not bother telling my parents either, and I live in the same town as them!”

An offended gasp came from Cynthia, who seemed to not like hearing her sister be so rude, but it was Lucina who spoke once more. “I disagree, I think that it’s quite suspicious that she didn’t bother telling them a thing. Especially since she’d just been to see them not long before leaving, there was plenty of time to let them know what was going on. I firmly believe that not telling them was an intentional choice, but what it means is—”

“Hold on just a minute, you probably know her parents better than any of the rest of us, wouldn’t you say that Kjelle telling them that she’s leaving the country would result in a huge disaster and argument, maybe with punches thrown and lots of screaming?” Not even caring that she’d offended her sister with what she’d said before, Morgan was completely focused on verbally settling this issue with Lucina. “Hell, I’ve gotten to spend a bit of time with her parents before and I know that telling them anything they don’t want to hear will end with someone feeling hurt.”

“—I’d agree with you, but the people we knew as her parents aren’t even close to the people they are now, from what I’ve heard.” Her eyes opening once more, Lucina shifted her gaze upward so she couldn’t see any of the eyes resting on her. “I mean, we’re all aware of the incidents that led to Kjelle deciding to leave them to live in Ylisse, I doubt she’d have made that decision if her parents were the people we’d known them to be.”

“So you’re telling me that they wouldn’t have minded if they’d known she was leaving the country? Somehow I doubt that’s possible.”

“Morgan, I know you want to think that you’re right, but you need to be open-minded about this. Let’s not pigeonhole her parents as these aggressive people who’d pick a fight with their own daughter because she’s doing something potentially dangerous. They want what’s best for her, and if she wants to travel I don’t think they’d stop her from doing so, which is why it doesn’t make sense that she wouldn’t tell them she was going.” Lucina looked at Morgan with a solemn expression, getting anger in return, but refused to back down from her stance on the matter. “It isn’t as if this is the issue at hand, though, we just need to understand why they stayed in Hoshido and where they’re going now that they’re there.”

Takumi raised a hand to draw attention to himself so he could speak. “I’ve said this to you before, Lucina, but I don’t think they’re actually intending on staying in Hoshido. We know without a doubt that Inigo isn’t there, who’s to say they haven’t tried replicating his journey in an attempt to find him?”

“Because who would know his journey well enough to replicate it,” she replied as calmly as she could, while everyone else present tried not to laugh at the absurd suggestion. “Everyone had no idea where he’d gone and what he’d decided to do, remember? That’s why he’s been missing for ten years.”

“I know, but it was an idea. People could’ve lied to us about what they knew when we asked.” Lowering his hand now that he was being shamed for what he’d said, Takumi tried scooting away from the table but Lucina reached out to grab him to keep him where he was. “I’m sorry, I might’ve just ruined the seriousness of what was being said with my laughable idea, I should go.”

She shook her head. “Where would you go? I think Freddy and Sil were going to try and get the copier to work, and Bud was talking about getting food ordered, and who honestly knows where Kitte is right now, so would you just wander around until you found someone you know?” While she raised a good point that he didn’t have a direction in which he’d be going, she’d left out many possible people he could talk to, something that he was going to keep to himself until he could get away.

“Just let him go, he’s right that he ruined how serious we were trying to be,” Morgan said, sounding like she meant business with her words. “He can go play copy-bitch with the others or something, who really cares what he does? I know I don’t.”

“Would you shut up for five seconds and stop being rude, he might have just said something dumb but it doesn’t mean that he should go.” Immediately apologizing for being so snappish, Lucina turned to face Takumi and saw him pushing his chair further from the table, rather than feeling wanted by what she’d said. “Are you really going to leave us? I just yelled at a friend for you and you’re still going to go?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be back soon enough. You all just keep talking, it’s not like I’m much use to you anyway.” Flashing a grin that masked how negative he was being towards himself, Takumi waited until Lucina had turned back to face everyone remaining at the table before standing up and walking towards the offices there at the station. As a civilian, he shouldn’t have been allowed to go into that areas without accompaniment, but as a former prince and someone closely linked with an important family to the station, he could do exactly as he pleased without complaint. The offices were mostly locked up, the officers that used them either out for the day or around doing something else entirely, but the one he was looking for in specific had its door sitting wide open.

“Did something get brought up out there that you feel our attention needs to be drawn to?” Cordelia asked without looking up from the papers she was organizing, a pen in her hand as she jotted down notes here and there. “Or are you here for some casual conversation?”

He laughed, scratching at his arm awkwardly as he stood in the doorway, looking between the woman at the desk and her lookalike daughter sitting against the wall, throwing a ball up into the air. The next time the ball came back down to her waiting hand, Severa held onto it as she said, “I think it’s probably the first one, Mother, since why else would Takumi want to come talk to you? I bet they’re out there badmouthing Hoshido or something.”

“That isn’t exactly right, but you wouldn’t believe how much they don’t want to listen to the truth.” Coming into the office and closing the door behind him, Takumi saw Cordelia put the papers down and focus on what he had to say, while Severa stood up to look more interested. “I mean, I didn’t tell them the exact truth, I just might have made a comment about how people could have lied about knowing where people were and none of them wanted to believe me about it.”

“Why would you try telling them that people were lying about knowing stuff? That doesn’t make any sense, and it implicates you in things even though you weren’t directly involved in…most of it.” Her head tilting to the side as she smiled at him, Cordelia watched as Takumi shifted uncomfortably against the door, reaching for the handle he’d latched on himself. “Oh please, you know that none of them would call you out for being involved in the mess in the ways that you were, but at the same time, they might not be thrilled with you once they know that you set some events in motion.”

“When Sakura approaches with a request, you don’t ignore her, even if it’s a silly request. I’d do what I did again in a heartbeat, if it means that she gets what she wants.” He glanced towards Severa, the image of his younger sister overlapping with the physical presence of the girl standing there in his mind. Sakura had been right around Severa’s age (a couple years older at most, he recalled) when she’d approached him asking him to help arrange someone safe crossing into Nohr, despite the countries being on unsteady ground at the time. He’d had to do it before, when people had wanted to go across the border for family reasons, and he wasn’t going to tell her no this time, but when he’d asked why it was so important she didn’t give him an answer.

Had she said why this was something she was asking for, he might have refused to do it, but at the time there was no reason to tell her no. Within a year’s time he wouldn’t be in Hoshido anymore, they’d be motherless and their brother would be ruling as king, and the poor guy he’d helped get across the Nohrian border was now trapped there indefinitely due to the closure of all border gates. Things had changed since then, that much he knew, but the guy was still missing, and he couldn’t tell the woman he loved that he had helped her brother disappear into nothingness. “You didn’t do anything wrong though, Subaki did, for asking Sakura to help with his silly task. I know you’d been part of how we’d gotten across the border for our grandfather’s sake, but you never had to do this for Inigo.”

“Thank you for the reminder, Cordelia, but the fact that it was Sakura of all people asking me to do this made it impossible to say no. I had no choice but to make the border crossing happen, but I didn’t know what would happen after. That was one of my last tasks as a ruling prince, you know.” The memory of finding out that their mother had been murdered by Nohrians and that the border was now locked as a declaration of war was one he hated lingering on, yet there it was, fresh in his mind. That was the final straw to convince him to leave Hoshido for himself, to get away from the royal mess that his life had been up to that point, to follow the woman he’d fallen in love with rather than convince her to come stay in Hoshido with him.

He couldn’t help but wonder how much different life would have been had she been the one to uproot herself for the sake of a relationship. Lucina had a happy life in Ylisstol, working there at the police station in her father’s footsteps, but she was haunted by the disappearance of her brother—something that she clearly carried on her shoulders as a large burden. She had to deal with so much emotional baggage because of him going missing, even though the search for him had brought her so many good things, Takumi himself being one of them. If they had chosen to live in Hoshido, he could’ve kept his royal title and she would have been able to attain one, and they’d be able to be hands-on with the search for her brother.

Except if they’d decided to be in Hoshido rather than Ylisse, this second disappearance would never have needed to happen, because he _knew_ that the two teens had gone missing in search of Inigo. If they’d been there looking for him and never giving up on finding where he’d gone, those two wouldn’t have felt the need to go do the same. “I know you’re thinking about what you could have done to stop this,” Cordelia said, breaking Takumi out of his staring at Severa, who’d gone back to throwing the ball in the air, “but listen to me. You did what you felt was best for you, and you didn’t need to consider what anyone else would choose to do. Those two going into Nohr to find Inigo only happened because O’wain wanted to do it, it wasn’t anything to do with you.”

“It wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t made it possible for people to cross the border easier, getting that forger into Hoshido wasn’t exactly easy, after all.” Takumi sighed, thinking about the market square and how many times he’d been there to make sure the person doing illegal acts there hadn’t been faced with legal troubles. “It’s a miracle that Ryoma or Hinoka, or even Sakura, haven’t said something about that guy holding a shop there. Maybe they think the control at the border is just as dumb as I did, when I was allowed to have an opinion about it.”

That comment got them talking about politics as a whole, moving away from the specifics of their one situation to focus on the entire political climate between the neighboring countries half a world away. It was a topic that was a large time-sink for anyone getting involved in it, and by the time Cordelia had said her piece about how she felt the governments could handle themselves better more time had passed than Takumi had expected. He excused himself from the office without much of a reason for why he was leaving so quickly, and as he walked away from the reopened door he heard Severa make some remark about how he was being weird and that he needed to chill out. Cordelia’s responding laugh was enough to make him feel like she was on his side, even though she was most likely laughing in agreement with what her daughter had just said, and that feeling of belonging carried him back to where the meeting was.

He was greeted by the sight of Yarne on the phone, nodding along to whatever was being said to him, while Lucina had her head buried in her arms on the table. “What did I miss out here?” he asked, inwardly hoping that someone would tell him that the missing people had been found so he could stop living with the guilt of being partially responsible for everything. “What happened to all the talking?”

“Apparently some of the Feroxi big-bosses are coming down here to meet with people, so that they can figure out how to handle this situation better,” Cynthia explained, while Morgan rolled her eyes, fiddling with her phone in her hands as she listened to her sister. “And after Lucy got called about that, that’s when Yarne got called by his mother, and who knows what that’s about. So that’s what happened to all the talking.”

“Feroxi bosses? You mean like police bosses?” Takumi got to see every head that wasn’t buried or actively on the phone nodding, and he saw that they all looked rather grim at the idea. “What’s it for, did something happen that we’re not aware of? We are at the police station and no one could tell us there’s a crisis happening out there, is that what you’re telling me?”

Lucina lifted her head and turned to face Takumi, her lips pursed together in the straightest line he’d ever seen someone’s face be in. “No, that’s not what they’re telling you. What’s happening is that the Feroxi police force has been involved in this whole situation from the start, and because it’s been so long with zero leads, the heads of the force are going to pay our station a visit to see what they can do to help us. This is bordering on an international crisis, and once the Feroxis know that the girl that’s missing is in Nohr, there’s no telling what they might do. Declare war on a country half a world away? Completely possible.”

“Girl, okay, so this is about—wait, how do you know this is about her? Isn’t your cousin from there too, wouldn’t they also care about him? I think this would be about both of them, there’s no way they’d declare war over one missing girl.” Takumi sat back down in his chair from before and moved it back up to the table’s side, while Lucina buried her face once more. “H-hey, what are you doing? Why’re you hiding your face again?”

“I cannot believe you’d think that his father knows about what’s happened to him. Aunt Lissa has made sure not to tell him a word about where O’wain went, the only way he’d know anything happened is if someone else told him. Which I guess could have happened if this really is blowing up to this size, but I hope for their sake it hasn’t happened.” Her voice was muffled due to her face being pressed against her arms, but her words were clear regardless. “At any rate, I know they’re coming because my father called me to tell me what was happening, because Kjelle’s parents are apparently coming down to speak with him as well about this.”

“It’s not just them coming into town over this,” Yarne said, having just signed off of his phone call with a brief farewell. “That was my mom, she says that they’re coming to be part of the conversation as well. It’s going to be one huge reunion around here in a few hours once everyone’s here, don’t you think?”

Lucina winced at his read on the situation, but ultimately lifted her head and gave a small nod in agreement. “It’s a reunion none of us want any part of, but it seems we don’t have a choice on the matter. Let me go tell everyone here at the station what will be happening, so that they’re not taken by surprise by all the familiar faces dropping by. Takumi, care to join me as I go?”

“Uh, yeah, I can do that,” he replied, unsure as to why she’d made that request but once he heard the others at the table mention that they probably should let their parents know what was happening to make it a true reunion, he understood her intentions entirely. “There’s not too many people here right now so this shouldn’t be too hard, but I’ll go with you.”

“Thank you. Everyone, let’s not let what’s going to happen get us down, no matter what the Feroxis want we’re not going to send a single person to Hoshido to go look for them, because the last thing we need is to start a war because of my brother and cousin.” Standing up from her chair and motioning for Takumi to do the same, Lucina gave a weary smile at the four people still sitting at the table. “The second-to-last thing we need is everyone converging here on the station, but it seems that’s something that’ll be happening soon regardless.”

“Go tell everyone what you need to tell them, we’ll be around waiting when you’re done,” Morgan said, waving for them to head towards the offices. “And who knows, maybe more people will be here by then, and maybe they’ll be people you have to tell all this to too.”

The sly look on her face was an indicator that perhaps she hadn’t quite gotten over their minor spat earlier, and Lucina was wise to ignore it, turning to head for the furthest offices to start informing people there first. Takumi trailed behind her a few steps, not sure why he needed to accompany her but not going to ask her if there was any specific reason for it. Deep down, he knew without a doubt what the reason was, and he was proven correct when, a little while later, they walked into an office with its door wide open, the officer inside at her desk going through paperwork while her daughter was throwing a ball towards the ceiling.

This time, there in Cordelia’s office, there wasn’t talk of how much people knew about what had really gone on. There wasn’t friendly banter, or light arguing, or any chance of being able to verbally regret what had happened. It was two officers talking about what was going to be happening there in their station in a matter of hours, the senior officer going pale when she heard of some of the guests who’d be in attendance. “I think this might have been planned, Lucina,” Cordelia muttered after glancing towards the calendar on her wall after hearing the news. “Why else would two people who’d made the choice to stay far away from this city come to visit unexpectedly, except to make a plea as to where their daughter might be, on her birthday, no less?”

“I, er, hadn’t realized that was today, perhaps you might be onto something with that.” Lucina bowed her head in respect for a second, before her eyes shifted towards Severa, who’d stopped throwing the ball when she’d heard what her mother had said. She looked to be frozen in horror, almost as if she’d just been told something she’d never considered possible. That girl had to know more about the situation than she let on, but grilling her about it in front of her mother wasn’t going to happen, and there wouldn’t quite ever be a suitable time to make it work.

This was something she lamented about to Takumi after they’d left the office, and all he could do was pretend like he didn’t know how right she was. Their relationship was built on a foundation of lies, and it was getting harder to keep a straight face when it came to hearing about them. Having all of those people looking for answers he could’ve given them around wouldn’t be an easy task, especially not when he was introduced to the parents of one of the people he’d indirectly aided in going missing. Lying to them was infinitely harder than lying to any of the other parents, because they hadn’t had a clue about what was happening until it had all gone wrong, and they so clearly were angry and upset about what had happened.

If he could’ve sent a message to the people he’d once known in Hoshido, telling them to get those foreign kids out of Nohr and send them home without completing their task, he would’ve done it right then and there.

* * *

Sighing as she lay flat on her back on the bed she had been swapping with Beruka, Kjelle’s eyes were focused on the ceiling, nothing interesting up there to keep her mind from wandering too far from her current situation. When she was accompanied by at least one other person she could do a pretty good job of not thinking about how where she was and what she was doing there was a bad idea, but the moment she was alone that was the only thing she could think about. The previous night was no exception to that, when Camilla had decided she wanted to share her bed with Beruka, and that meant that she got to sleep alone in the other bed.

Her sleep had been disjointed and barely qualifying as actual rest, as her mind was racing with all the things she’d done wrong in her life, all the times she’d made poor decisions that had ultimately ended with her being there in that room. A fair majority of those decisions related back to someone else, though, and whenever she’d get to thinking about him, she’d drift into dreaming about the first time they’d properly met, a memory that she held onto because of how everything fell apart after it happened. She could vividly see the looks on her parents faces when they found her talking to the kid sitting alone at the airport, him seeming so happy to have someone there roughly his age to talk to, even though their interaction had started with her yelling at him for being in her way as she was going somewhere. Their demands that she leave him alone were impossible to not remember, because she was young and ignorant and didn’t know why they wanted her away from this kid so badly.

It became a crash-course in over a decade’s worth of drama that she didn’t care to hear about, but only listened to because her parents were so insistent on making sure she knew the full story before going back to talking to the lonely kid. That was the first time she’d actually heard about most of what had happened before she was born (and, really, before he was born as well), but it didn’t deter her from wanting to keep him company until it was time for his flight out of Ferox to go back home to his mother—a woman she’d just heard some negative things about, although some positives were given with them.

She sighed again, closing her eyes to visualize her parents’ faces once more, not as she’d seen them with her young child eyes but as she’d seen them when she’d last visited. They deserved a lot better than what she’d done to them, and she could only hope that they hadn’t acted too brashly whenever they’d found out she was gone from the country they’d last heard she was in. Of all the losses and hardships they’d had to face as a family, nothing would compare to her disappearing out from under everyone’s noses, and she feared that they’d do something stupid to try and bring her home, whether it be come hunt for her themselves or, worse, only have one of them make the journey overseas to try finding her.

“Vani, are you awake in there? There’s someone at the door for you,” Beruka’s voice called out, sounding just as neutral as she always did, but her message came as a surprise to Kjelle, who jumped off the bed and changed into something that wasn’t her pajamas before going out towards the front door, meeting her friend right in front of it. “So you were awake, I figured about as much. Answer the door, he’s getting impatient with this waiting game.”

“Why does it sound like you know who’s out there already?” Kjelle asked, not getting an answer from Beruka as she stepped backwards to let her get in closer to the door. She shrugged and went to open the door, but the possibility of it being someone she didn’t want to see crossed her mind as her hand touched the knob, and she pulled back as if it were heated. “You have to tell me who it is, I’m not opening it if it’s your pal Niles or someone like that.”

Beruka shook her head, denying an answer once more. “I was given strict directions not to tell you who it is. Camilla knows, I know, now it’s your turn to find out.” When Kjelle looked back at her almost to plead for a real answer, she was given the tiniest of smiles, almost as if she was at her limit for resisting saying who was there.

Knowing that it didn’t give her any clarity as to who the visitor was, Kjelle hoped that maybe Beruka’s positive attitude towards it was a good sign, and she went back to opening the door. As soon as she’d pulled it open Odin came barreling in, grabbing her in a hug that lifted her off the feet as he spun her around a couple of times. “Happy birthday, you old woman!” he told her once he’d set her down. “Come on, come on, we’ve got things to do, places to go, fun to be had on this special day!”

“What are you talking about, I can’t just go with you wherever you want to go, birthday or not. If Camilla needs me, I’ve got to stay around here.” After straightening out her clothes from the surprise attack, Kjelle once again found herself looking towards Beruka for some kind of answer, and all she was given was a dismissive wave. “Uh, isn’t this the part where you tell me that I’m right and that I have to stay? I haven’t seen Camilla this morning and you usually tell me what we’re doing when we see each other after we wake up.”

“Take my silence as an assurance that you can leave with Odin. He approached Camilla the other evening to ask if he could borrow you for a bit of time today. She’s in the bath right now, otherwise she’d be here sending you off as well.” Beruka gave her wave a second time, this one more forceful than the first had been. “Go with him, you have a strict lunchtime return to achieve and you don’t want to miss it. I’ll be here when you get back.”

“Thank you for letting me know that, and thank Camilla for me too! I’ll not be gone that long, I promise!” Excitement building within her now that she knew she was going to be spending time with her best friend, Kjelle more or less ran out of the building and had to wait outside for Odin to join her, him looking less pleased and more rushed than anything, something she felt she needed to address. “What’s all this about?” she asked him, as he took the lead in where they were going. “I get that it’s my birthday, but if you knew you could just snatch me from under Camilla’s finger before, why hadn’t you done it already?”

“I didn’t know I could do it, I was talking it out with Leo and he said that if he knew his sister as well as he thought he did, she’d let you out for a few hours if I asked nicely. So I did that, and she said that was fine, and now here we are!” Odin seemed impressed with himself, to the point that he was walking with a bit of swagger in his step, and he turned his head slightly to look at Kjelle behind him, her face scrunched up at the name he’d mentioned, something he wasn’t aware of the reason for. “Why do you look like you’re mad that I dragged you out of there? We’ve got something important to do today, trust me!”

“Nothing, nothing, I’d just prefer never having to hear about Leo if I don’t have to. Dude’s an ass to me and I didn’t do anything to deserve it.” The threat that had been made to her about being nasty towards him was always on her mind when she was talking about him, and the last thing Kjelle needed was for Odin to go running back to him and tell him she’d said anything negative in his direction. “If you can, could you please not talk about either of your little boyfriends to me?”

All at once, the spring in Odin’s step disappeared into nothing and he stopped moving forward, causing Kjelle to nearly knock into him. “Who told you about that?” he asked, panic in his voice. “Whoever is talking about that needs to—”

“Talking about what?” Taking a step back so that she wasn’t right on top of her friend, Kjelle gave him a once-over, looking from head to toe to see his almost timid posture, the way he was hunched over slightly for some reason. “That they’re your boyfriends? Aren’t they, though? Like, isn’t me saying that just me stating a fact?”

“—no one is supposed to _know_ that, Kjelle!” Covering his mouth the moment he’d yelled out her actual name and checking their surroundings for anyone who might’ve heard him, Odin gave her a panicked look once he’d accepted what he’d done. “I just…Leo said that it would be damaging to his image if people knew what was happening. How did you find out?”

“I didn’t find out anything? Unless this is your way of telling me something, anyway.”

The panic on Odin’s face did not fade even remotely, as he mentally through all the stages of accepting what he’d just done. “I guess I’m telling you now then, but you have to not tell anyone a word of this. Promise me you won’t? You have to promise me about this, Kay, it’s life or death if you say something to someone.”

“I’m not going to talk about either of them willingly, I can’t stand hearing about them as is and…wow, you really are freaking out about this, aren’t you?” She could see him shaking, his hands lowering from his mouth as he’d come to terms with all parts of what he’d just done. “Chill out, if there’s anyone you can accidentally announce your relationships to, it’s the person who’s known you like guys longer than anyone else. Your secret’s safe with me, no worries.” That was a scene that Kjelle would like to forget if she could, because it had involved a lot of awkward conversation and swearing up and down that she wouldn’t out him to anyone, despite having zero interest in doing that to him.

“I know I can trust your word, you haven’t failed me yet.” He took a few moments to collect his breath and reorient himself on where he was aiming on taking them, but soon Odin was leading the way once more, pretending that nothing notable had happened there on their way. Even still, he was being oddly silent compared to the normal Kjelle knew for him, and no matter how many times she asked him where they were going and what the point of this birthday excursion was, he wouldn’t say a word. That changed when they came up to the back door of the rec center, which if they entered it would put them inside the library. “It’s a long story about how this came about, but there’s someone waiting on the other side for us.”

A list of possible people crossed Kjelle’s mind, but when she saw how unworried Odin was to have made that statement, she knew that it couldn’t be someone that had no reason to be there in Nohr. “How did you make this happen?” she asked, glancing around the door to check to see if there were cameras of any kind watching them. “Have you, uh, talked to them for yourself to make sure they’re the real deal?”

“I highly doubt the person who helped me out would lie about who they convinced to meet up with us for a little bit today, we just have to believe!” All of the fear and worry that Odin had been expressing earlier was long gone, something that put Kjelle’s mind at ease a bit about what was going to happen. She had no idea who he’d asked to help him out, nor did she really want to know in case it was either of his boyfriends, but she was beginning to feel excited about opening that door. “Let’s get through this as fast as we can, don’t need anyone wondering where we’ve gotten off to if we’re out too long.”

Even though he was speaking confidently, Odin was still nervous as he opened the door, pushing it open and stepping inside, lingering by it until Kjelle was through before he closed it behind them both. “Fancy seeing people come in that way, figured that door was a hidden secret no one had bothered to investigate,” a voice said from somewhere in the library, catching them both by surprise until the speaker appeared from around one of the shelves closest to the door. “You two must be the ones I was asked to speak with?”

Watching reactions was the only thing Kjelle felt comfortable with doing in that moment, because the only time she’d actually met the person this was supposed to be was when she was an infant. Odin, though, knew who he was supposed to be looking at and was inspecting him from head to toe, checking to see if the person standing in front of him matched the person of his memories as best as he could. “Er, I wasn’t expecting to be inspected like this when I agreed to this,” the man said, shrinking back away from Odin. “You may want to explain yourself before I allow you to continue with this.”

“I’m sorry, I just…give me a moment, will you?” Instinctively, because it was something he’d grown up doing and knew that it was something that would be recognized, Odin raised an arm up until his hand was about an inch from his face, covering it from view but showing off the scars that covered his arm. “I feel like I’ve been reunited with a ghost from my past, a shadowy figure that I never expected to meet with again in this world.”

The man stopped his retreat, choosing instead to lean in closer as he tilted his head, his own inspection beginning. “There’s no way that there’s more than just the one person I know who’d act like this, but it’s impossible. O’wain was just a kid last I saw him, he wouldn’t have traveled here to find me.”

“The person you speak of is no more I’m afraid, but in his place rises the glorious Odin Dark, like a phoenix from the ashes of immaturity and bad parenting choices!” Moving his hand so that his face was unobscured once more, Odin pointed towards the person he was speaking to with an upturned palm. “And I have taken it upon myself to put an end to the questions of where my long-lost cousin has disappeared to, for the sake of his parents and sister!”

His eyes snapping to the hand that was in front of him, the man exhaled a shaky breath before turning his attention to the other person present. “You’re certainly not someone I recognize, unlike this guy here. How’d you get roped into all of this, you dating him or something like that?”

“Ugh, yeah no, you could not pay me enough to be interested in Odin, sorry.” Kjelle wasn’t sure how she was supposed to act right then, given that she hadn’t ever talked to this person before and the one time she’d seen him, she had zero personality traits to speak of. “I’m here because he wanted a friend to come with and I was the only one available. You might remember me, you might not, I sure as hell don’t remember you, but I’m Kjelle. Name ring a bell for you?”

The man once again gave a long breath, this one less shaky as the previous one but more drawn-out. “The only person I knew by that name was an actual baby the one and only time I met her, but it’s such an uncommon name that you can’t be anyone but her.” There was fear in his eyes, fear and concern for what was happening around him as these two figures from his past—one of which he hadn’t even seen in nearly eighteen years—were standing there in front of him in the Krakenburg library. “How did you manage to get here and find me, hm? I suppose someone who knew ran their mouth?”

His defenses were dropping, he wasn’t as worried about what kind of trap had been set for him as he was trying to find answers, and that was when Odin lost all control over himself and began rambling out everything he could think of to explain the situation. Everything, from how the disappearance had shaken everyone to their cores, to how people had been handling it with yearly pleas for his return, to how he’d gotten the idea to find him himself after talking with people who knew a thing or two about the truth. And by the time he was done recounting their journey to Hoshido and Nohr, he was crying and so was his cousin, although at two different intensities. “The first time you see each other in like ten years and you’re bawling like babies,” Kjelle teased, watching the two and their tearful standoff. “You’re hopeless, both of you.”

“You’d be crying too if your family had been looking for someone for so long and you found him out of never giving up hope!” Odin choked out in return, not bothering to mask how emotional he was. “I knew I’d find you for them, Inigo. I really did.”

Blinking away tears now that the initial brunt of the emotional onslaught was over, he shook his head. “I haven’t gone by that name since I first traveled to Nohr. Address me as Laslow, it’s what everyone here knows me as and I…cannot go back to my old name, not while still within these borders. You understand too, don’t you, Odin?”

“Not really, I happened to be looking for an excuse to get rid of that old name. Kay over there, she’s not fully sold on her fake name still so she wouldn’t understand either.” Odin took a step closer to Laslow, with outstretched arms that only seemed to be getting wider, but he remained closed off and ignored the gesture. “What’s the matter, this reunion had all the tears and stuff already, now we’ve got to hug it out and leave this place!”

“I’m not leaving Nohr anytime soon,” Laslow said, his stance shifting so that he was leaning even further away from Odin’s arms. “There are matters I have to finish attending to here, and even after those are taken care of, there’s little chance I could make a break for the border without being caught, given my role as assistant to the future leader of the country. Even going past that, I assume you’re here to take me back to Ylisse for whatever reason, and I have zero desire to go back on anyone’s terms but my own.”

“Then it’s a good thing we’re here to take you back to Hoshido then, not Ylisse.” That was a lie, but Odin seemed to have been rehearsing what he was going to say, so there was no reason for Kjelle to call him out on that. “We met Hana before we crossed the border, Subaki took us to meet her to give us a good reason to bring you home. You’ve got to go back for her, for her and for Soleil!”

Time seemed to freeze there in the library as those words hit Laslow’s ears, and his eyes slowly shifted around, as if he was thinking about what he’d just heard for an extended period of time. When his thoughtful gaze brushed over Kjelle, she could feel the iciness that he was trying to get across to her, and she could only hope that Odin would notice the same when his eyes crossed his path. “The two of you _met_ her, hm?” he quietly asked, and neither of them were sure which her he was talking about until he spoke further. “If anyone back home found out about her, they’ll…be so disappointed in how I turned out. Soleil deserves the world, not what she’s been given.”

“And that’s why we want to take you back to her and her mother, not back home to everyone else!” Odin’s voice was raising, not out of anger but out of insistence that he was doing the right thing. “Come on, it’s been so long since you’ve been back that you—”

“I cannot leave right now, you have to understand that. Me staying here has been mostly due to commitments I made when the border closed on me after I entered the country.” Now Laslow was stepping further away from where his cousin was trying to be so persuasive, as if he felt threatened or simply bothered by what he was being told. “Once those are handled, and they will be soon, I know they will, I can attempt to set my story straight with Xander and leave, but there’s no guarantee of success.”

“Odin, knock it off, there’s no use in trying to keep convincing him to leave.” Able to read the situation and understand that it wasn’t going well for her friend’s argument, Kjelle hoped that she was able to talk at least a little sense into him. “You can’t change his mind, he has reasons for staying and you’re not going to magically make those go away.”

“She’s right, you know,” Laslow said in agreement, glancing towards Kjelle with a small, almost thankful smile, but she shrugged it off as if it was nothing, something she came to regret the moment he spoke again. “As for the two of you, my reasons for staying should be your reasons for leaving Nohr as soon as possible. The last thing you need is to be locked within these borders permanently, and if you linger trying to convince me to leave that might become your reality.”

One of her eyes twitched at hearing that, and she immediately began glaring in Odin’s direction, while he processed what had been said and chose to laugh it off. “You think we’re going to leave without you, Laslow? We abandoned everything we had back in Ylisse to make this happen, we’re not leaving without you!”

“And you’re making a mistake for that decision. Listen to me, I know what is going to happen here in Nohr soon enough, the last thing you need is to be caught up in it.”

None of this was anything Kjelle wanted to hear, not on her birthday of all days, and even though she loved Odin and everything he did most of the time, this was one instance where his stubbornness and refusal to back down from the challenge was not something she agreed with. “If that’s the case, I’m out of here,” she said, turning on her toes and heading back towards the door they’d entered in. “Somewhere in that thick head of yours, the old O’wain should be begging you to give up, but this Odin guy just isn’t going to do it, and if you get in trouble for it…not my problem.”

“Kjelle, you can’t abandon me when we’ve gotten this close to what I’ve been trying to do!” One of Odin’s hands began wilding gesturing towards Laslow, while the older man shook his head and muttered something to himself about his cousin’s immaturity. “Remember everything we went through to get to this part? Are you going to let that all go to waste? We’re right here, we know where he is, we’ve almost finished what we came to do!”

She reached for the door, not bothering to look at what her friend was doing after that impassioned explanation that only ate at her soul. “No, we’re here almost finishing what you came to do, I never wanted any part of this from the start. This was all you and Severa doing the planning, I only got pulled in because she couldn’t come.” Talking about Severa made her heart hurt slightly, the memories of her almost-sister making her miss home more than she had at any point since she’d come to Nohr. “I’m going to find my way back to Hoshido, with or without either of you, because I’m done with this stupid mission.”

The second the door came open, the scene inside changed because there was no guarantee that there weren’t people waiting on the outside, people who would ruin all of their lives if they knew what had been being discussed. Now Odin was calling after the completely-fake Vani, while Laslow most likely disappeared into the depths of the library or left from the other door, and Kjelle couldn’t actually be bothered to care about what either of them were doing anymore. She wasn’t going to allow herself to be trapped in Nohr when she hadn’t been interested in coming in the first place, and she wasn’t going to continue staying around when it was clear the person she’d been dragged there for wasn’t leaving. Now all she needed to do was convince Camilla to let her go, and she’d be set.

Unfortunately, there was not going to be any chance of Camilla setting her free, not without serious action having to be taken first. That became clear after she’d walked back across the Complex to the living quarters and found that both Camilla and Beruka were still in the room, both ready for the day and seemingly waiting for their third person to come back. “I hope your time with your little friend was all you could have asked for and more,” Camilla said in greeting, voice sickeningly sweet. “Usually I don’t allow for someone else to come pick up one of my girls, but it’s your birthday and I felt it deep within my heart that Odin wasn’t exactly interested in you for anything but your friendship.”

“Something like that, sure,” Kjelle replied, trying not to let her bitterness of what had happened show too much. “He’s not into people like me so no worries there, he just wanted to do like we’d do back before we ended up here and spend some time together on my birthday. Nothing important.”

“Oh yes, it is your birthday, isn’t it?” Tutting as she shook her head, Camilla held out a hand, expecting Kjelle to grab it, but when it was ignored she took matters into her own hands, approaching the blonde girl and grabbing her into a large hug, complete with her chest pressing up against her hard. “Happiest of birthdays, sweet Vani! We’ve been so blessed to have you here with us as part of our family, and had we known today was your big day we’d go out to celebrate it with you! Alas, it’s too short of notice to do anything, so we’ll just have to save it for when we go out next month for Xander’s birthday, if you don’t mind.”

As much as she wanted to get out of the hug, and get out of her contract there with this overly-affectionate woman, Kjelle knew that fighting that fight right then was just as hopeless as the fight Odin had been fighting before. “I don’t mind at all, I wasn’t really expecting anything to happen this year. It’s only turning eighteen, how special does that need to be?”

“I don’t think you know what Camilla means when she says we’re ‘going out’ to celebrate a birthday,” Beruka chimed in, watching the strangling hug from a distance. “Any age is special when you go out with her, especially if you’re legal and can have fun.”

“Should I be afraid of what kind of fun you’re talking about?” Worst-case scenarios were beginning to enter Kjelle’s mind, as if Camilla was going to sign her up for something dangerous or deadly. The last thing she needed was to be trying to get away from the place and have something happen to her that would keep her there against her will, but the silence on the matter she received from the pair was more telling than they knew.

Being stuck there in Nohr, after fighting with the one person she genuinely liked over the reason they’d shown up in the first place, was a worst-case scenario in itself. How much worse was it going to get?


	6. Secret's Out

There was plenty of time over the coming weeks for Kjelle to patch things up with Odin, even if it was awkward for both of them to face each other and what argument they’d had, and accept that they were both stuck where they were, with no chance of leaving or getting what they wanted, there at the time. They weren’t going to back down from what they both wanted out of the whole situation, but because neither of them would be getting their wishes right away, it was easier to forgive and move past their fight than it would have been had one of them been close to achieving their current goal. Over the course of those weeks, no real progress was made on the front of them leaving, on the terms of either person, but with the whispers among the people around them starting to mention the idea of the borders being closed, it seemed that time was slipping out of their hands faster than they realized.

But none of the siblings they came in contact with seemed to want to address the issue that could be potentially closing those borders. When Kjelle would see Elise, she was always cheerful and talking with Effie or the slightly older man she knew to be as Arthur, and none of them seemed like anything was amiss. Leo still had a huge grudge against her, but even then when their paths would cross he wouldn’t do more than give her a glare; Niles tended to be at his side but also wouldn’t say anything out of the ordinary, and naturally Odin didn’t know anything she didn’t know for herself. Xander and his pair of pals were never around so they weren’t much in the way of a judgment for what was happening out in Nohr, which meant that Kjelle’s only chance of information was from the women she lived with.

Learning anything from Camilla was sketchy at best, because she was quick to turn conversations into gushing over the current object of her affection or interest. Beruka was a lot better with information, but when she didn’t want to talk, there was no pushing her to do so without a threat. However, on the day that they got herded into a large car like animals, Camilla toting a bag that she insisted was full of secrets, Kjelle began to wonder if maybe that was the day she’d learn what was being rumored to happen, whatever it was.

In a roundabout way, she was right, but in order to get to that point of being correct she was about to have to endure the single worst thing she’d ever gone through in her relatively young life. “We’re going out for Xander’s birthday,” Beruka explained when she saw Kjelle looking around expectantly at the ladies there in the car, which were the three of them who’d entered together, as well as Effie and the blue-haired lady that was always at Xander’s side. “I warned you about this, you don’t know what it means for us to be going out like this, and I don’t think you’re ready.”

“Don’t let her scare you,” Effie chimed in, the sound of her chewing on something distracting from her words. “As long as there aren’t any weirdos there, it won’t be a bad time. Thankfully the weirdos tend to go after Camilla, but…”

“I don’t get where we’re going, so none of this is helping me.” Kjelle had stopped looking around at everyone and was focused on looking out the tinted window, seeing the world outside the Complex for the first time since she’d gotten there. She didn’t have the slightest of clues as to where it was they’d go for Xander’s birthday, she didn’t know the guy and all she knew about him was that he was oldest and everyone was respectful of him. Was this going to be a dinner? Why was it just the female workers there in the car, excluding Elise (who wasn’t even present) and Camilla? What kind of place were they going to be taken to, if they were split up like this? So many questions kept crossing her mind as they moved, to the point that she wasn’t paying attention to anything anyone else there was doing.

“Earth to Vani!” Beruka called, waving her hand in Kjelle’s face and very nearly smacking her to get her attention. “You spaced out there while we were trying to explain where we’re going. Do you not want to know beforehand?” She got a mumbled response that yes, yes she did want to know, but Beruka seemed to no longer be interested in the assistance she’d been offering. “Never mind, you can just find out when we get there.”

“It’ll be a lovely experience for you, dearest Vani,” Camilla assured her, before opening up the bag that she’d brought with her. “Now what size clothing do you wear, I’m sure I have something to doll you up in, but I want to check to make sure. You can’t be much different than Beruka and myself, seeing as I’ve caught you in our clothes before, but it’s better safe than sorry with this sort of thing. Don’t want a patron accidentally stripping you.”

Kjelle went to answer the question Camilla had posed, but the last sentence hit her right as she came up with what she felt was an acceptable response. “What do you mean, someone stripping me? I never agreed to go somewhere that’s possible.”

“It’s a lovely bonding experience, whether you’re expecting it or not.” Not even minding that what she’d said had gotten such a negative reaction, Camilla pulled out what was undeniably a frilly piece of lingerie from the bag, before tossing it in Effie’s direction. “This one’s yours, it still has your play name on the tag. A shame that you don’t choose to try something a little more revealing, but I understand.”

“Why are you tossing underwear around?” Her eyes watching in horror as Camilla grabbed more from the bag and began allotting it to the people in the car, Kjelle wanted an answer but seemed to get that she wasn’t going to be receiving one. As she looked on, every woman ended up with a piece or two in their hand, before Camilla’s eyes flickered over to her, reaching into the bag once more and extracting what looked to be a purple corset, complete with strings for tightening it. It was a lovely color, Kjelle would admit, but she _knew_ why it was in Camilla’s hand and she wanted nothing of it. “H-hold on, I’m barely legal, you can’t do this to me.”

“Except you are legal, hush,” Camilla replied, tossing the corset over to her. “I’m going to assume that you’ll fill it out about as well as Beruka would, perhaps needing it a bit tighter, so it should work for this first outing. All we expect of you is to put on a show, have a good time, it’s nothing serious when we’re out on the stage for the public.”

The feeling of the lace and coarse fabric in her hand was making Kjelle feel sick to her stomach, especially as she thought about what people back home would think if they found out she was dressing up in something so skimpy. Severa would find it hilarious and laugh until she cried, but she’d be the only one who found humor in the situation, as every single other person that came to Kjelle’s mind led right back to her parents finding out somehow. “I am not doing this,” she asserted, wanting to throw the corset back to its owner but not finding the arm strength to do so. “I’m not a stripper, or a hooker, or whatever you’re wanting me to pretend I am.”

“You sure did bring a whiner along there, didn’t you?” the blue-haired lady asked Camilla, nodding her head in Kjelle’s direction. “How’d you manage to keep her this long without her needing to come to terms with our fun outings?”

“As she alluded to, she wasn’t exactly of legal age to come out with us until recently, and as much as I enjoy breaking rules, that was not one I thought should be broken.” Closing the bag now that everyone had something to wear, Camilla leaned back in the seat she’d chosen, crossing her legs one over the other and exposing to those sitting across from her that she was already wearing her own kind of frilly nonsense underneath her miniskirt. “Besides, she’s doing exactly as much whining as every single one of you did the first time you came out for this sort of thing. Don’t shame her.”

Effie laughed next to the woman, nudging her with her shoulder. “Yeah, Peri, don’t shame Vani for being a little apprehensive. We were all whiners once upon a time, until we learned how fun this actually is.”

As they bantered and bickered, Kjelle found herself wanting to sink back into her seat, disappearing from everyone’s view and minds until she could escape the Complex and everything it involved. She refused to believe that they were being taken somewhere to act like strippers for someone’s birthday, she refused to believe that said someone’s younger sister was in on the planning, she refused to believe that she had absolutely no say in her own involvement. It wasn’t right for her to have to sit there and play along like she felt this was acceptable, but she was all too aware of the fact that trying to rebel against what was expected of her was not going to work in her favor. This was just another addition to the list of stupid things that Odin’s dumb plan to rescue his cousin had ended up putting her through, and she was going to make sure he knew all about how she felt the next time she got to talk to him.

It wasn’t too long until they were pulling up outside a building on what looked to be the outskirts of town, adorned with a flickering neon sign that Kjelle couldn’t stand to look at, not wanting to see what the place she was being dragged to was called. The car backed up to a side entrance, the driver coming around and letting all of the ladies out, them immediately entering the door that was slightly ajar. Camilla was at the head of the group, taking them through dark hallways that led to what was clearly a changing room, all of the lockers inside labeled with stage names that made Kjelle incredibly uncomfortable to see. “The gentlemen should be here within the hour, which means we have plenty of time to get ready for our big show,” Camilla said excitedly, throwing her bag aside and beginning to disrobe before she’d even finished speaking. “We have hair to do, makeup to design, masks to fit to costumes if necessary…so much to get done before we go out for a fun evening!”

Hair and makeup made sense to Kjelle, but when Camilla brought up masks, she was once again looking around for someone to explain to her what was going on. Thankfully, that explanation came without her really needing to prompt it, as Peri was sliding a mask out from the middle of her costume, the shiny material it was made from glimmering in the room’s light. “Some of us prefer to remain somewhat anonymous while we’re performing, just in case there’s anyone out there looking specifically for us.” As she was looking directly at Kjelle while she spoke, it was obvious that she was trying to play the role of the know-it-all right then. “I mean, for some of us it works, for others not so much.”

“I could never don a mask on stage, I’d get recognized for other assets of mine.” To prove her point, Camilla bounced slightly, her barely-restrained chest bobbing along with her. “But it’s no big deal if you get recognized, the boys all know who we are before we even get on stage. It’s more fun watching them squirm and struggle to call us our fake names for the evening than anything else!”

“You mean, we have to pick stage names?” Kjelle asked, looking once again at the names on the lockers. “I’m not choosing any of the ones in here, if that’s what you’re going to tell me I’ve got to do. Not interested.”

Camilla laughed, beginning to tie her hair back into several parts. “Of course I’m not going to tell you that you’ve got to pick one that’s in here, that would be impersonating the ladies who normally work here! You get to come up with your own, and with a name like Vani I’m sure that you could come up with one easier than any of the rest of us! Why, I’ve got several in mind for you already.”

“Don’t let her suggest one, you’ll get saddled with something bad and totally not you,” Beruka whispered, catching Kjelle by surprise as she hadn’t even noticed that she was that close to her in the first place. “She tried telling me to go out there as ‘Beauty Queen’, because why the hell not. I told her to shove it and picked Bee for myself. Simple, obvious, but something that I relate to.”

“So I could pick something like…” Kjelle’s mind went immediately to suggesting the name _Vee_ for herself, to play along with the already-fake name she was using, but the reminder that there was an alluring body part that started with the same letter made her hesitate before saying anything. Her next thought was to just go with the middle name she was using, but throwing it out there would be too obvious, she felt, and that was when she decided to raise her voice and say, “Is it cool if I pick the name Kay for being on stage? Like, the letter except not?”

There was no answer, until Beruka, who wasn’t bothered by their conversation going public in the slightest, pointed out, “Isn’t that what one of Leo’s boyfriends calls you? Where’d he even get that kind of name from Vani?” That sparked the other ladies all chattering about how strange of a nickname that seemed to be, and Kjelle found herself realizing very quickly that she shouldn’t have gone with that comfortable suggestion just because it felt most natural for her.

“It’s just an Odin thing, I don’t know where he gets it, if we’re being honest, but I know that he’s always called me it no matter how much I’ve told him not to. It makes for a good name for something like this though, I’d say.” She may have just dug herself a hole, but if there was any way of saving it, accusing Odin of being the one responsible for the name. “So do you ladies agree? Can I use it?”

As it was Camilla’s opinion that mattered above all, she was the one who had to lay down the judgment about the final decision. “I suppose it’ll work, as long as your sweet friend Odin doesn’t suspect it’s you just because of the name,” she said, after giving it some thought. “If it ends up backfiring, there’s always next time to come up with something better, since you’ll have much more time to get crafty about it. Now come on, time’s wasting, we’ve got so much preparation to do and we’re spending our time discussing minute details!”

There really wasn’t all that much to do, especially with how fast Camilla seemed to want everyone to get ready, and so the ladies ended up prepared for the stage long before they needed to be. At that point, Camilla started giving out advice to the whole group about how they should act that evening, in regards to the interests of the man of the night. “I am well aware that we’re here to celebrate my older brother, and that he is going to be annoyed at best with all of this, but we have to make sure that we are including him at every turn. Or, er, that _you all_ are including him, it would be highly awkward if I was.”

“You always say that, since we’re usually here for him,” Effie called, before laughing to herself from behind her mask. She looked to be comfortable in the clothes she was wearing, as if she’d enjoyed herself wearing them before, and yet she was hiding her identity with the masquerade-style mask covering most of her face. “You’re the one who always sneaks off and goes to find other patrons to spend time with.”

“That would be because I’d rather Xander not have to watch me up on stage if I can help it,” Camilla replied, adjusting her top to push up her already-sizable bust. “I’m sure he’s got eyes for someone else here, anyway. He doesn’t need to be lewding his adorable younger sister.”

Kjelle didn’t know who was being referred to by that statement, although she had an inkling given that someone there was associated closely with Xander, but she didn’t want to make any guesses and be wrong. “As long as you come home clean at the end of the night, or the next morning if that’s how things go, does it really matter?” Beruka crossed her arms over her chest to hide how lacking her coverage was, or to show that she was being serious underneath her caked-on makeup, or perhaps a bit of both. “We didn’t have any problems with you showing up the next day last time we were out here, and that wasn’t even for Xander’s birthday.”

“We saw what came of that evening on the stage, though. All the bad publicity that we got for the behavior of some unsavory others could have ruined Daddy’s business and our entire lives, but it all worked out.” Fake sniffling, Camilla adjusted her top again before moving towards the door, her hips swaying altogether way too much for how she was walking (something that Kjelle was sure was her putting on a sultry persona). “Let’s get a move on, my dear vixens! The gentlemen should be here any minute now, we don’t want to leave them waiting too long!”

“She does this every time,” grumbled Beruka, once again next to Kjelle without her realizing it. “Just watch, it’s still going to be at least half an hour before we see any men we recognize, and even then it won’t be Xander and his guests for a while after that. This is just Camilla’s way of running the show, like always.”

“How often does she do this?” Kjelle asked, trying not to look towards Beruka to make it obvious they were talking. “Like, it seems like this is all pretty well rehearsed.”

Shrugging, Beruka continued looking at the other ladies as she also continued to try and make their conversation look like it wasn’t happening. “A couple times a year at most, definitely every year for Xander’s birthday because he hates it, but other than that it’s spotty when it happens. We came out this year for Leo’s birthday because he was old enough to finally do it, and that was a disaster.”

She didn’t need explanation for how that could have been disastrous, as Kjelle could easily put the pieces together in her mind and know, without a doubt, that Leo would have no interest in being somewhere that ladies were showing themselves off. That made it come as a complete surprise a while later, after the awkwardness had begun and the ladies were rotating on and off the stage, when she saw Leo sitting off to the side with his eyes scanning the room for someone in particular. No one else seemed to be paying any attention to him, but she knew that if he was around, that meant either of his boyfriends could be around as well, and she would rather Odin not see her in such revealing clothing.

Going back behind the stage for a moment, Kjelle thought she could take a second to catch her breath when she heard Camilla calling for her (using the name she’d picked, naturally) to go out to see someone who’d requested her. She nearly jumped in surprise at hearing Camilla’s voice using her nickname, and she scrambled back onto the stage to see Leo, of all people, standing at the side looking up at her. “Thanks for that,” he coldly said to his sister, waving her away. “And thank you for responding to that so naturally, _Kay_. Almost as if you’ve got something you’re hiding.”

“What do you want from me?” she snapped, enjoying the height she had over him as she was still on the stage. “I’m supposed to be working, not talking with losers like you. Pay up or shut up, those are your options.” She didn’t actually want him to pay anything, but the last thing any performer saw before stepping out onto the stage was a sign that said the words she’d just quoted, as a method of handling unruly patrons. Leo glared at her, before shoving his hand into his pocket and retrieving a stack of money, the sight of which made her eyes go wide. “Whoa, I wasn’t serious, you don’t—”

“I suppose a hundred would suffice?” His words were matched with him holding several bills out at her, what must have equaled a hundred of the Nohrian currency, which she couldn’t fact-check and had to believe he was telling her the truth about. Her eyes darted to the money, then to the other ladies on the stage, before she grabbed the money and jumped down to standing beside him.

As she shoved it in the only place on her body where she knew it wouldn’t get lost, inside the cup of her bra, she kept her eye on Leo and his displeased face. “That’s more than enough, I guess we find a private room to do whatever you paid me for. Which, knowing you and how you roll, I’m not sure what that might be.”

“Oh, you know exactly what it is, don’t worry.” The way Leo spoke was serious, which didn’t do anything to answer Kjelle’s fear of what he was about to put her through, but when he grabbed her hand and dragged her down the hall, she knew that she wasn’t going to know until they were talking. He seemed to know his way around the club surprisingly well, and he was able to direct them into an empty room that was set up for some dirty activity, making sure the door was closed behind them. They stared at each other for a moment after the door was closed, before he sighed. “Before you assume I’m in here to partake in anything inappropriate with you, I’m not. However, I know you’re doing some illegal things yourself, so what better a setting for this confrontation than right here?”

“I’m sorry, what?” Kjelle was taken aback by the accusation of illegal behavior, especially as the child of two police officers, but she knew that she was not playing within any sort of laws being there in Nohr in the first place. “Look, if you’re here to try and make me talk to you about things that you’re guessing at, I’m not interested. You can take your money back, it’s not happening.”

He shook his head, positioning himself in front of the door so that any attempt to weasel her way out of the conversation would be swiftly stopped. “Keep it, it’s not like I don’t have more where it came from. Or perhaps you wouldn’t know the details of the family fortune, would you, _Ylissean_?”

“I…what does that mean?” Playing dumb was going to be hard for Kjelle to manage, but she couldn’t let Leo know that he was right on target with his accusation. “What are you calling me? I don’t understand what you’re going on about.”

“You can’t play stupid with me, I’m already aware that you’re not from Nohr, or even from Hoshido, and when I talked to Odin about it, under the assertion that he would be fine no matter what he admitted to, he let everything spill out about where you both hail from.” Leo held out a hand towards Kjelle, his finger pointing at her face, and she scowled at seeing it. “I then did some research and found that neither of you properly exist in Nohrian records, which backs up the claim, but without real names I can’t exactly throw a search into Ylissean ones to see the details about you both. There are far too many people who go missing from the country for various reasons to even start making a guess.”

She knew that she was being backed into a corner that she wasn’t going to be able to easily escape from, but if there was one thing that defined Kjelle, it was her strength in every situation. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Odin’s a liar trying to make himself sound cooler to his boyfriend from the sounds of it,” she said, her scowl deepening. “Typical Odin, always ready to spin a wild story if it means he comes out like the coolest guy alive.”

“He told me about the book in the library, the one that has passages about your native country. Or was it countries, he was telling me that things are a little bit confusing when it comes to where you both are from.” There was no way that Leo was making all of these guesses correctly, which proved that he was telling the truth when he said that Odin was telling him things, and that fact only made Kjelle angrier. “I’ll give the same offer to you that I did to him, you tell me who you really are and I’ll let you live on with no consequences, until I can find a way to have you deported without issue, that is.”

Holding him to his word wasn’t possible, Kjelle knew, but she also couldn’t lie to Leo right to his face and expect to come out of the encounter okay. She had to decide what she was going to do, and deciding to do nothing was not an option. “How do I know that you aren’t going to run your mouth to Camilla, or to Xander, or to your father?” she asked after thinking things over. “I don’t trust any of _them_ with this, just like I don’t trust you.”

“So the truth begins to be revealed,” he mused, looking at her expectantly as he turned his hand, bending his still-pointed finger to beckon her closer, an invitation she refused. “You can’t hide from me, especially not on this matter. The moment I heard you claimed your name was Vani Ella, I knew that something wasn’t right, and Odin’s confirmation only solidified that gut feeling. Who are you, where are you from, tell me everything, or else I will tell others what little I know.”

“I should’ve known that half-rate name would do me in.” The memory of sitting there at Subaki’s house, being given the fake identities and learning that all of them had them flashed into Kjelle’s mind, but was immediately replaced with a much more wholesome one. She was back in the house in Ferox, sitting in the small living room in the cabin at the camp she’d lived in for so long. No, it wasn’t that she was just sitting in the cabin, she was on her father’s lap, him struggling to braid her hair while he was telling her some kind of story she couldn’t understand the words to. He was laughing even though he wasn’t sure what he was doing to her poor head, but everything stopped when her mother walked into the scene; she was set down on the floor and told to go play with the horses so they could talk about something.

This was a memory that Kjelle had replayed many times over her life, it always coming to her when she found herself in situations where she needed the strength to do what was best for her, not everyone else. From the attached stables she could hear her parents loudly arguing, fighting about something that she never quite understood no matter how many times she heard it, and to try and block the noise out she decided to try climbing onto one of the horses to braid its mane, much like her father had been trying to do to her. As always, the memory ended with her parents coming into the stable and, seeing her on the back of the rowdiest, roughest horse they had, both yelling her full name and telling her to be careful—not telling her to stop, not telling her to get down, telling her to _be careful_. “My real name is Kjelle,” she told him proudly, the syllables of her name falling from her lips similarly to how her mother always said it. “I’m a Ylissean girl born and raised in Regna Ferox, here in Nohr for no reasons of my own.”

“And you’re going to tell me those reasons, aren’t you, Kjelle?” Unlike how she’d said her own name, Leo said it with venom coming off his tongue, spitting it out like it was trying to kill him. “The only people allowed in this country are natives, or they’re here with permission from our leader, my father. You don’t have either of those excuses, do you?”

“I can’t tell you why I’m here, it wasn’t my idea and I don’t know the details beyond Odin bringing me with him. If you want to know why we’re here, you’ve got to ask him, I’m sorry.” She felt weak for having just thrown her best friend under the bus like she had, but he’d already done the same to her to get her into this situation with Leo. He at least deserved to have to pay a little for running his mouth. “I’ve told you everything you’re going to get from me, that’s just how it is.”

“I figured as much,” he admitted, backing down from his earlier behavior and sounding less disgusted with what he’d learned. “As I can’t change my word now that you’ve acted on it, I suppose the agreement stands that what you’ve shared stays here between us, and that I’ll find a way to get you out of Nohr and back to wherever you belong, without anyone knowing the truth until you’re gone. The last thing this country needs is a foreigner’s blood on its hands, given the current political climate and whatnot.”

Blinking at him, completely lost as to what he was talking about, Kjelle figured that if she asked for explanation as to his meaning, she would be treated condescendingly once again, and she was honestly tired of Leo doing that to her. “Yeah, get me home, it’s all I’ve wanted since I wound up here in the first place. You’ll be doing everyone a favor by sticking me on an airplane and sending me back to the capital of Ylisse, if not the capital of Ferox. Either way, you’ll be reuniting me with the people that miss me.”

Leo scrunched his face, his nose and cheeks bunching up. “We’ll see what happens, as my intention is not to get you back to them but merely to get you out of our country.”

“You’ll treat me like that, but not your precious boyfriend, huh?”

“H-he will get the punishment he deserves for being a lying, deceiving animal, but I will at least give him the dignity to make his choice of staying or going. If he chooses to stay, I have ways to get him the proper paperwork to be a real citizen of Nohr.” There was a pause, where Leo’s face loosened for a second, before it tightened back up. “Disgusting, I’ve been spending all this time meddling with people not naturally of Nohr, and no one bothered to clue me in to this fact until this week.”

“Because we didn’t want you to kill us for that fact, that’s why we didn’t tell you!” Based on what she was hearing, Kjelle was fairly confident in her assumption that Odin had only told the truth about the two of them, and had left out his cousin’s involvement in things entirely, so she couldn’t exactly explain what had possessed them to illegally cross into the country. “I never thought we’d wind up so wrapped up in all your family drama, but we had no idea who you people were when we started working for you in the first place.”

He nodded, still disgusted with her but also accepting of what she was saying. “That would make sense, given how you’re from a foreign country that I know little about. The names of the countries you’ve lived in are familiar to me, but due to the lack of general knowledge about other nationalities we receive around here, I can’t say I know much about them. And what I do know is most likely falsified, in order to…” He trailed off as he began staring into the distance, at an invisible point just past her shoulder. “In order to keep the population of Nohr unaware of what lies behind the country’s borders.”

“We found that out with that book in the library,” she said, thinking back to when she and Odin had been looking at the pages about the countries they’d grown up between. “When it said that Plegia was the better place of the three to live, we knew something wasn’t right. Ylisse is great, Ferox is passable, but Plegia is the middle of the damn desert, it’s nowhere anywhere wants to be.”

“Insinuating that people want to be here in Windmere, or anywhere near Krakenburg, I see how you’re trying to kiss up to me and I must say, it’s not impressive.” His eyes were still locked onto that point, and when she turned to see what he was looking at she couldn’t find anything except the chair in the room and the wall. “I’m thinking, Kjelle, how is it that you managed to make it this far into our lives here at the Complex with such shoddy paperwork? We know where you got it from, who crafted it for you, which Hoshidan it is that was responsible for purchasing it, that’s all information we have at our fingertips. But no one bothered to call attention to it until someone’s lips fell loose with the truth. How?”

She grimaced, not sure how she was supposed to answer such a pointed question without making some sort of social misstep. “I guess we did it through dumb luck. We met Effie and Elise on our way, they directed us to you, Camilla found herself attached to me and you got attached to Odin and we were set. It just worked out.”

“Except now it’s all falling apart, because I know the truth.” At once, Leo broke from his staring and lunged for Kjelle, grabbing her arm with one hand and her throat with the other. His grip was firm, but he wasn’t choking her by any means; he was merely holding her to pull her head in close to his. There was malice in his eyes and dripping from his voice as he told her, “What I know will remain secret until I get you out of here, then it becomes common knowledge. Better think twice about ever stepping a toe into Nohr again after I’m through with you.”

“I trust you to keep your word,” she replied, her words heavy in her throat as they moved past his hand when she spoke. “And if you don’t, I’m sure that I can get the police force of two entire countries out for your blood.”

“Threatening the man who holds your life in his hands is a bold move, but I accept the threat.” Letting go of her after squeezing her tightly for a moment, Leo backed away to the door to open it. “I’m finished with you. Keep that money, it’ll help you when it comes time for you to leave. I pray this is the last time I have to speak with you.”

He was gone before she knew what to say, and because she knew that people undoubtedly knew she’d been alone with him, if anyone saw him back without her she would probably not hear the end of it that night. Making sure that the money was tucked away tightly, she snuck back out towards the main room, passing by mirrors that showed off the reddish mark around her throat from where she’d been being held. “Someone’s going to question that,” she muttered, touching it for herself before shrugging it off, hoping that she wouldn’t be asked a word about what she and Leo had done in that room.

To her relief, no one seemed to care that she was a little shaken up when she got back on the stage, and she spent the rest of the night doing what she had been signed up to do, ultimately being one of the only two to still be on stage by the end of their time there. Peri had gotten distracted talking to Xander himself, and Effie was here and there as she kept going back to talking to Arthur, and no one had any idea where Camilla had gone, so it was just Kjelle and Beruka having to be on stage for the crowd. It was still uncomfortable to be up in front of the gazes of so many strangers in so little clothing, but she managed to push through knowing that she wasn’t alone, and that refusing to participate could end up signing her life away.

The ride back to the Complex was a lot more subdued than the ride to the club had been, with everyone dead tired and not wanting to talk much. Kjelle was fine with that, even though she had questions about where Camilla could have ended up, but she didn’t want to start a discussion about it to have it lead to places where she could put her foot in her mouth. She and Beruka made the decision to sleep in their bed together that night, in Camilla’s absence, and when they woke up in the morning they were still alone. “Usually she’s back by now,” Beruka admitted, as she prepared herself to take a shower upon waking up. “I’m going to get the rest of this glitter off of my body and then go take a look around to find her. I’m not worried about her, but she might’ve gotten dropped off in the wrong building.”

“And that doesn’t make you worried?” Kjelle saw Beruka laugh her question off and duck into the bathroom, and that was when she took her own opportunity to go look outside for herself. When she opened the door, she was expecting nothing to be on the other side, so for there to be a local newspaper on the doormat was strange. She bent down and picked it up, finding it to look more like a gossip magazine than a proper paper, and when she saw the names of the siblings on the cover her blood felt like it was freezing in her veins. There was no way that news of what they’d done the night before had already made it to the local media, so whatever the paper was talking about had to be old news. It couldn’t be allowed to distract her from going to see where Camilla might have ended up.

Unfortunately, she did let it become a distraction, as by the time she’d taken it back into the room to throw it in the trash she’d already started leafing through the pages, looking for the headline story about the siblings. What she found was not scandalous in that it talked about going to strip clubs that they rented out, but rather about the love lives of the older three children and how completely, utterly atrocious their choices of romance were. It was in that moment that Kjelle learned two things about Nohr, which made her fear for the life she’d been roped into—one was that having multiple partners was frowned upon, and the other was that people in Nohr were so stuck in normative ways that being anything but straight could quite literally be a death sentence. And the article in question had not only just wrongly accused her, Beruka, and Camilla to be together, but had correctly called out the real three-person relationship there at the Complex.

It became apparent almost immediately that the outrage over the article and what it claimed to be happening was done to cover other, more pressing matters, up from the public eye. The people of Nohr were used to occupations, they were used to warring and feuding with other countries (specifically Hoshido), and yet they were not used to their country being the reason for such issues. As perfectly timed as it could have been, in part to how the siblings living inside the Krakenburg walls were involved in things in their own ways, the same morning where the public awoke to gossip magazines claiming illicit romances happening between the most prominent members of society, something far more important was going on in other parts of the city.

This was something that everyone who was brought up in those articles—of which there were many, they all found out quickly—learned when Xander, stone-faced and looking like he was going to murder someone for what was going on, pulled them into a meeting in the library. “You all have undoubtedly seen what has been published about us,” he began, looking across the eight pairs of eyes that he’d called there to watch him, “and I must say, you certainly all made it easy to come up with a cover to the overthrow we have been planning for so long.”

“Hold on, you’re just going to tell them?” Peri asked, her lips flattening out as Xander gave her a nod. “That’s stupid, we’ve done so much to keep this all secret and you’re just going to tell them? They’ll run their mouths and it’ll be public knowledge in a week, tops!”

“Hush, we can keep secrets.” Folding her hands over her lap and leaning in to her brother’s cold stare, Camilla gave Peri a gentle smile, hoping it would calm her down but finding that it only irritated her further. “After all, we’d managed to keep the news that exactly one of the three of us is as scandalous as the papers claim to ourselves for this long.”

Shifting in her seat as she listened to Camilla rattle off other instances in which secrets had been maintained, to prove her point, Kjelle found herself glancing over at Leo every so often, his eyes having focused squarely on her. She knew the precarious position she was in with him, where he knew her big secret and could easily out her, and the others, to the group as a whole if she so much as said a word. But even after Camilla’s examples trailed off and they were getting back to the business at hand, she found herself being drilled into with those pointed eyes, Leo’s anger simply radiating off of him. This wasn’t going to be enjoyable, and getting back home was now her top priority, no distractions allowed.

Alas, there was one major distraction that was in her way, and it tied into what Xander had called them all there for. “As you all know as inhabitants of the Complex, there has been a political captive here for almost as long as some of us have been alive. We have always treated her like another member of the family, whenever she has been allowed to mingle amongst the Nohrians, but those of us who knew why she was here knew that her continuing to be here would only present problems in the future.” He turned his back on the crowd and waved to someone behind one of the bookshelves, and after a couple moments a maid walked out, her apron disheveled and her pink hair a mess. “Felicia here did an amazing job in getting the captive to safety in the dark of the night yesterday, while we were all out at the club, and without her, it is quite likely that Corrin would never have made it into safer hands.”

“You’re telling us that it finally worked?” His voice was sprinkled with surprise when he spoke, and when Leo saw the maid nod her head eagerly, he sat back in his chair and gave a content _hmph_. “Very well, we’ve only been drafting the plans to get her out of here for years. Excellent work, Felicia.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t listen to rule-breakers,” she replied, without a doubt teasing him for what was common knowledge to the world now. “But thank you! It was a lot of sneaking for myself and Jakob but I think we got the job done. Corrin should be on her way through the border in disguise any second now, and then the Hoshidans can do with her as they want.”

From there things broke into political talk that only those who’d been involved from the start understood, while the people who’d been used as pawns in the entire thing were left listening to the world unfolding around them. “From what I’ve heard, when they first captured Corrin, the border was closed for years,” Beruka said, looking directly at Kjelle when she said it but doing it out of friendliness, not out of trying to push an agenda. “Kind of sucks for everyone who was interested in checking Nohr out after it was closed for so long, but they’ll find new lives here. They had to be allowed in for a reason.”

“You really don’t think they’re going to close the border again, do you?” she asked in return, fearing the answer she knew she was going to get. All Beruka did was nod once, before turning her ears to whatever Camilla and her brothers were discussing, which left Kjelle to slump backwards, throwing her head towards the back of the chair she was in. If she was going to be trapped in Nohr, she needed to know how to get a message across the border sooner rather than later, so that word of where she was could make it back to her parents before they assumed she was dead.

Once again her eyes drifted towards Leo, but just in case he was doing the same towards her she quickly redirected their course, letting them instead land on Odin, who seemed rather at ease with what was being said, despite the seriousness of it all. There was no way that he was going to be fine with being trapped in a foreign country without any way to get home, not when their original goal was to get in, get someone, and get out. He might just have forgotten all about that goal after all, with his apparently illegal romance he’d gotten wrapped up in, and that bothered her. She couldn’t keep letting herself be an innocent victim in his plans, but there wasn’t really anything she could do about it, was there?

“Vani. Come here for a second, darling.” It was Camilla’s voice, sounding somewhat assertive but not angered by any means, and the sound of her words made Kjelle jump out of her seat, before joining the three siblings in their conversation. “I understand that you have some issues with my sweet brother, and those are quite large and unable to be ignored by any of us, but those have been kept between you within the confines of these walls, correct?”

“Uh, yeah, something like that,” she replied, not sure where the questions were leading and even less sure if she wanted to know. “It’s not like I leave this place much.”

Leo rolled his eyes, seemingly aware of where his sister was headed. “I cannot believe you’re going to pick _her_ for this, out of everyone! Please, Camilla, have some decency and some understanding of my…tastes in people, if you will.”

“This is no time to be picky.” With a commanding voice, Xander managed to shut Leo up without even a whimper, before he too turned his attention to Kjelle, who was now looking cautiously between all of them. “My apologies, Vani, but in order for the general population to not catch wind of the political upheaval happening in Nohr, we need more of a distraction for them to focus on, and we need you to partake in it.”

The mere idea of being part of a political cover-up made Kjelle feel uncomfortable (she could only imagine the _horror_ her parents would express if they knew what she was being asked to do), but she knew that it was either agree, or have Leo blow her cover. “What, exactly, are you asking me to do?” she questioned, hoping that she’d get a simple explanation that would set her mind at ease about things.

What she was treated to instead was a quick breakdown of the hostage situation that had been resolved, using the cover of the birthday trip to the strip club as a distraction from it, followed by a lecture on how the Nohrian government was fond of using the four siblings inside the Complex as scapegoats for drama whenever political things went awry. “And that all results in us having to get creative from time to time to appease the public—and our father and his henchmen—while trying to forge our own paths in this world. Does it work? Not always. But because this particular upheaval is our own doing, we are taking the reins in making sure it all works.”

“Taking the reins, huh?” She hated it, but all Kjelle could think of with that particular expression was her mother, and talking about horses and the camp they lived at. It was all about control, about having the power to do what they needed to get done, and she was not going to be the person to put a stop to this scheme. It may have been directly impacting her ability to get home, but she wasn’t going to actively sabotage someone’s plans for change. “I’m in, I guess. Just tell me what I need to do and you’ve got me.”

If she could have taken a picture of the look of horror on Leo’s face at the sound of her agreeing, she would have done it without hesitation. “You’re kidding, aren’t you, Xander? You somehow managed to get _her_ to agree to fake-dating _me_?”

“It does appear to be so,” his brother replied, and it was right then that Kjelle realized that neither of Leo’s siblings knew what he knew, and neither of them had any clue that what they’d just arranged was going to be the single-worst idea of their lives. And as much as she hated the idea of it, if she was going to be trapped in Nohr even longer, she was going to make sure she was having a fun time of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so when I planned this fic, this chapter/scene was my FAVORITE thing on the plans. I loved the concept and this was where the story was going to start getting wild.  
> but then, I found a different fandom to play around in and my inspiration to finish this story went completely kaput. I still look at it fondly, I still love it and want to finish it someday, but now is not that time and I can't force myself to finish it without my opinion on it turning to negative. I intend on coming back someday, but if I don't...well, the revelation that the two are going to be playing fake lovers for a while is a pretty good ending lol


End file.
